Location: Thelwall, Cheshire, England, United Kingdom

About The Project
Originally known as the Thelwall Burial Ground Project, this was originally started as part of a larger, lottery funded village heritage project for Thelwall in Cheshire, England. The intention was to research burials in the older part of All Saints' Churchyard, Thelwall. By the time the burial project got under way, the larger scheme was into its final year and the team could only hope to cover a percentage of the burials in the older part of the graveyard. However this was 2020, a year when nothing could be predicted and an unprecedented lockdown due to the global pandemic meant there were far more people than could have been expected available and willing to help.
During the year, 20 volunteers contributed to the research and though restricted to on-line sources due to the pandemic, they were able to investigate all the marked graves in the older part of the graveyard as well as looking into all the unmarked burials listed in the first burial register.
The team were able to produce fairly detailed results for some of the people interred in the graveyard although with nothing more than a line in the church burial register to identify them, others proved too difficult for available resources.
With the cancellation of the various open days to mark the official conclusion of the Lottery funded project, work continued to the end of the year by which time the team were able to provide stories and families for most of the people who are buried in the older part of the churchyard – almost 870 souls in all.
2020 marked the centenary of the village's war memorial and the work of the team also included looking at the history of the village's war dead to help commemorate the event. This was due to happen in November 2020, but with public events still reduced to a minimum information provided by the researches enabled information sheets to be provided for all those named on the memorial and these were displayed in the church grounds to enable people to visit and remember.
The team have also helped with an educational project for the local school and local authority, by researching the lives of some of the children who were named in the school log book, dating back to 1872 when the national school first came into being. The work from both of these additional projects has been amalgamated with the main burial ground project. An electronic copy will be deposited with the local archives and arrangements are in progress to make the information available to Thelwall church and community and have been added to Wikitree in the form of individual profiles.
SOURCES AND RESOURCES
The team researched their work widely though practically all on-line, given the restrictions in place for the duration of the project.
Original index compiled from:
- The church burial ground plan - Drawn up and with an index compiled probably in the 1980s (contains some anomalies)
- Family Search - on-line images of Thelwall Parish General Register 1782-1812
- Family Search - on-line images of Thelwall Burial Register 1813-1915
- Find A Grave- on-line index of Thelwall graveyard
- Padgate, Latchford and Thelwall Memorials. Normansell, Graham C. (transcriber). Publisher: Graham C. Normansell, Birchwood, Warrington, 1999
Research sources:
- All Saints' churchyard, All Saints Drive, Thelwall, Cheshire.
- Warrington Archives
- No Mean City - A Local History of Thelwall in Cheshire by Michael F. Taylor. Published by Marlston Books, 2010.
- Padgate, Latchford and Thelwall Memorials (as above)
- Thelwall School Log Book 1872-1918 - still in the school's possession
Online sources include:
- Ancestry.co.uk
- British Newspaper Archives
- Cheshire Archives
- Cheshire BMD
- Cheshire On-Line Parish Clerks Register
- Commonwealth Graves
- England & Wales General Register Office, GRO Online Index
- Family Search
- Find A Grave
- Find My Past
- Free BMD
- Lancashire On-Line Parish Clerks Register
- National Archives
Some of the team members have also created public trees from their research at Ancestry.co.uk
See Also
- All Saints' Churchyard, Thelwall
- All Saints, Thelwall - Burial Index
- Thelwall War Memorials
- Thelwall War Memorials - Index
- Thelwall Cemetery Memorial Survey
- Thelwall Memorials Index
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