Burial records are one of the most valuable resources in family history research. They can confirm a date and place of death, identify the cemetery where an ancestor was buried, and sometimes reveal details about the grave itself, including who else is buried in the same plot. For deaths before civil registration began in 1837, parish burial registers are often the only record that survives.
This page brings together the best free and subscription resources for searching UK burial records online, finding gravestones and memorial inscriptions, and browsing cemetery indexes for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
UK Burial Indexes
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National Burial Index
For England and Wales, contains more than 12 million burial records transcribed from parish registers and cemetery records. It is one of the most comprehensive burial indexes available online and is an essential first stop for anyone tracing ancestors buried in England or Wales. Records span several centuries up to the early twentieth century.
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Belfast City Council Burial Records
A free official search covering around 360,000 burial records from three Belfast cemeteries: Belfast City Cemetery from 1869 (including the Jewish, public and Glenalina extension sections), Roselawn Cemetery from 1954, and Dundonald Cemetery from 1905. Search by surname and narrow results by forename or year of death.
Gravestone & Memorial Databases
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Find a Grave
One of the best-known gravestone databases in the world, with over 190 million records from cemeteries across the globe. A personal favourite — I've found gravestone photographs of several of my own ancestors here. UK coverage is strong and growing thanks to a large community of volunteers who photograph and transcribe memorials.
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Billion Graves
A searchable database of graves and headstone photographs contributed by users via iPhone and Android apps. Records skew towards the US but there is substantial UK, Australian and international coverage. A useful alternative to Find a Grave for checking whether a gravestone has been photographed.
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Gravestone Photographic Resource
An international grave monument directory searchable by surname, country, county and cemetery. A good resource for locating gravestone photographs that may not appear on the larger databases.
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Historic Graves
A community heritage project focused primarily on Ireland, digitally recording and publishing historic graveyard surveys and stories. Searchable by surname with a list of transcribed graveyards and their records.
Cemetery Records Online
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Deceased Online
A subscription service offering burial and cremation records, grave maps, digital scans of registers and books of remembrance, and grave photographs from cemeteries and crematoria across the UK. You can browse and search registers by country, region, county, burial authority or crematorium without registering. A registered account is needed to view full records.
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Interment
A free online library of cemetery transcriptions from thousands of cemeteries across the world, built up over many years by volunteers. Useful for locating burial records from smaller and rural cemeteries that may not appear on the larger commercial databases.
Specialist Collections
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Cemetery Scribes
A database of tombstone inscriptions and records from Jewish cemeteries throughout the UK. An important specialist resource for researching Jewish ancestry.
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World War One Cemeteries
Photographs of all 940 cemeteries in France and Belgium containing 40 or more burials, personally visited and photographed by the site's compilers. Based on Sidney C. Hurst's 1929 book The Silent Cities, the site also covers many other military cemeteries and memorials from around the world.
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Scottish Monumental Inscriptions Archived
The original Memento Mori website is no longer live, but the archived version on the Wayback Machine still gives access to a large collection of PDF files transcribing monumental inscriptions from Scottish burial grounds. These records do not appear to be available anywhere else online and are well worth consulting for Scottish ancestry research.