​Cemetery

The Churchyard is joined to the much bigger (municipal) Buckingham Road Cemetery (also known as Great Ilford Cemetery) and often burials recorded as being at St Mary's are actually in that cemetery. Cemetery records are held on behalf of the London Borough of Redbridge by the Westerleigh Group at Forest Park Cemetery. Please confirm the approximate date of death before approaching Westerleigh, as they are not able to undertake extensive searches. You should be given a section letter and a plot number as plot numbers 1-500 are duplicated in the cemetery.

Churchyard information

The Churchyard is now closed by Order in Council to new burials.

 

Burial Registers
The Burial Registers are in burial date order, and record burials both in the Churchyard and in the adjoining Cemetery. They do not locate the burial plot, except cemetery burials have a marginal note 'Cmty' until about 1912 and thereafter churchyard burials have  a marginal note 'Chyd', the remainder being presumed to be cemetery burials.

​

Registers for 1833 - 1926  and 1 June 1931 - 19 May 1937 are  at the Essex Record Office. They are online at https://www.essexarchivesonline.co.uk/ParishRegisters.aspx?selAlphabet=G&selParish=6615&selChurch=6657 (a fee is payable). Burial Registers 1926 - 1931, 1937 - March 1947 and July 1951 - date are held at St Mary’s.  April 1947 – June 1951 is missing.

​

Locating a grave in the churchyard

Unfortunately the Burial Register gives no indication of where a person was buried. We have a list dating from about 1920 detailing the surnames associated with each grave plot.  Permission was sought in about 1980 to landscape the land immediately in front of the church, which included what we denote as plot C and a part of plot E (see key plan), but before this happened a record was made of all the monuments in this area of the churchyard. Some headstones were recorded as unreadable and only a selection of the best preserved headstones were retained. They were not necessarily left in their original position.  

​

Churchyard key plan (not to scale) showing location of plots A-H relative to the church building.

Tables showing surnames of grave owners, plot by plot, row by row
A - B - C - D (7-15) - D (16-24) - E - F - G -H

 

The sections shaded yellow in these tables have been surveyed and the monuments indexed; the sections shaded blue indicate that the corresponding page of the register is missing.

​

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

For information from the CWGC, follow this link for the Cemetery, and this link for the churchyard.

​

Can't find relevant information?

All the information we possess about St Mary's Churchyard is contained in these pages. If you cannot find what you need we will try to help in the first instance. Please contact us by email here.

​