Devon church grave yards

[Pete Mills]

Hi All,

Still new to this forum but wanted to ask a general question about the graves and headstones found in many Devon grave yards.

We have just come back from a week searching for ancestors in Devon and spent quite some time at the records office and searching round church grave yards. We felt quite lucky that we managed to find the graves of a couple of ancestors from 1830's. Looking around this was about the furthest back that we could see dates on headstones and there wasn't too many from this time.

My question is what was done to mark graves before this period? Is it likely that there are many older graves that were either unmarked or that have lost their markers? Is the stone/slate used in Devon prone to erosion?

Regards,

Pete

[terryleaman]

Generally the only graves with headstones were for those people whose family could afford to do it.
There are early stones in some grave yards, generally again these tend to be from the 1700s.
Different types of stone were used dependent on the local source material. Yes, slate does delaminate. Other types of stone tend to weather badly- but granite and other hard stones tend to survive quite well.
If you look at the burial registers of some of the very old churches and note the numbers and then look at the small proportion of those graves that are actually marked.

[Pete Mills]

Hi Terry, thanks for the info. It makes sense that only the wealthier families would have been able to afford head stones. It just struck us as odd when we were looking around that there were no older graves and I guess there would be many more that were unmarked.