| Description | Friends burial grounds often pre-dated meeting houses as Quakers could not be buried in parish churchyards, and they were usually sited on plots of land donated or purchased by Friends and maintained by the Preparative Meeting. Plans of burial grounds were kept, identifying where individuals were buried. Grave stones were rarely used to mark the graves as they were considered unnecessarily ostentatious and it was not until 1850 that Yearly Meeting agreed that a simple inscription could be used. A number of these were erected for Friends who had died prior to that date.
Burial notes were issued by a Friend authorised to do so in the Monthly Meeting possessing the burial ground. Once the burial had been completed, the burial note was countersigned by an additional Friend acting as a witness that it had taken place and presented at the following Monthly Meeting where it was added to the burial register. It was then passed on to the Quarterly Meeting which also registered it before returning it to the issuing meeting where it was matched up with the stub in the book of burial notes from which it had been issued and pasted in. Nowadays, burials and a memorial minute are also recorded in the area meeting minute books.
Since 1864, the Registration of Burials Act has required each burial ground to have its own register, which is fulfilled by the burial notes and their pasted counterparts (see SF/2/1/1/9/4/3), although some meetings also keep a burial register (see SF/2/1/1/9/4/1). |