Recording Memorials

Recording memorials can be a very enjoyable, rewarding experience. Even very worn and difficult gravestones often retain more than anticipated at first glance and will repay the effort taken to decipher them. We have teamed up with Professor Harold Mytum of University of Liverpool to produce the Discovering and Recording Gravestones guide, introducing the science of recording memorials which you can download, print out and take with you to your next visit to a burial ground to have a go yourself. Professor Mytum spoke at our Cardiff conference in the spring of 2020 and  presented at our AGM in November 2020. He has written many books and articles on mortuary archaeology and continues to teach and inspire students.

Once you have become proficient in recording memorials you may like to download all the documents in Professor Mytum’s system, also available below. In these documents, advice is given on how to record, using the recording form, and each of the elements it contains – the inscription, the photograph, and many other features of the memorial. In each section there is some discussion of the reasons for including a particular record, and the range of choices with regard to its format. Practical suggestions are given to overcome some of the difficulties commonly encountered by recorders once in the field. Examples are also given of completed sections of forms beside photographs of actual stones.

Heritage Lottery Fund Logo

Many thanks to Harold for providing these materials and for delivering this series of webinars for us. Also to all the players of the National Lottery – your participation helps to pay for projects like this.

Discovering and Recording Gravestones

A beginner’s guide to visiting and recording memorials in burial grounds.

Part One - recording the memorials

To be used in conjunction with Professor Mytum’s Memorial Recording Form and Code Sheets.

 

Part Two - Photography and Additional Recording

How to photograph gravestones to capture them in the best light.

Memorial record form

You will need one form for each memorial you wish to make a record of.

Recording Code Sheets

This document illustrates the styles and types of memorials and shows you how to allocate a code to describe them on the Record form.

Webinars with Prof. Harold Mytum

Series of three webinars with Professor Mytum, recorded in Dec 20/Jan 21, in which he talks about the history of burial grounds and explains his method of recording memorials.

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