Churchyard

The churchyard is an important asset in the village. In fact, there are two churchyards – one round the church building and one on the opposite side of the road from the church building. There is also an area set aside for the burial of cremated remains (our Garden of Remembrance) to the right of the church porch. There are regulations in place regarding what kinds of memorials can be introduced to graves. They can be read here.

Registers are kept of all burials, and a map of the yard is maintained so that graves can be easily located. We are currently working on a project to ensure that all of the records are readily available to the public and as helpful as possible for those who are researching family history. As this project proceeds, we will update this page with all of the information. At present, we have a searchable database of the graves in our Garden of Remembrance further down this page, here, and an incomplete, but equally searchable database of the graves in the “new” churchyard at the bottom of the page, here.

Maintaining the Churchyards

The churchyard around the church building is closed for burials and is maintained by the Parish Council. The costs of this are factored into the Council Tax precept for all Widford residents.

The open churchyard on the opposite side of the road is maintained by the Parochial Church Council (PCC) and the costs of this are borne by the PCC. Because this is a provision for the whole parish (not just churchgoers), the Parish Council has agreed to give a generous grant towards the maintenance cost, but the PCC’s expenditure on the regular grass-cutting and hedge-trimming is significantly higher than this. We have established a restricted fund to receive donations towards this expense (money given to this fund cannot be spent on anything else). If you like to see the churchyard well-maintained and would like to make a regular or one-off donation to the fund, please visit this page or contact our treasurer, here. All donations are gratefully received.

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Garden of Remembrance

Here is the first draft of a database of the Garden of Remembrance adjacent to the church. Simply use the search box to type the name of the person you hope to find and the information we hold will be revealed. You can also search by other fields, e.g. age or date of death. Once you have refined your search, click the green circle to show more details of the relevant plot including other burials within it and images of the memorials.

For ease of reference, the area looks roughly like this (click to enlarge – opens in a new tab)

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Churchyard

Here is the first draft of the Churchyard database. We will update this in time.  Simply click the green circle to show the full record.

As with the Garden of Remembrance database, you can use the search box to type the name of the person you hope to find and the information we hold will be revealed. You can also search by other fields, e.g. age or date of death. Once you have refined your search, click the green circle to show more details of the relevant plot including other burials within it and images of the memorials. (The memorial images will be shown after the details of the second person buried in the grave because it is most common that graves hold just two people. Details of subsequent burials, where there are any, follow the image.)