We’re very pleased to announce that the Leeds Beckett Street Cemetery burial registers 1845-1987 and inscription grave registers 1907-1938 are now available to view on the Ancestry website. These records are an excellent source of information for family historians and if you have ancestors from the Leeds area they’re well worth a look!
Also known as Burmantofts Cemetery, or Leeds Burial Ground, the Beckett Street Cemetery was founded in 1842 and opened in 1845. One of the oldest, if not the oldest, municipal cemeteries in England, it sits on 16 acres, and the remains of an estimated 180,000 people are buried within it.
- An example of one side of an Inscription or Guinea Grave in the
Unconsecrated section of Beckett Street Cemetery from 1889
The entry for the grave as it appears in the Grave Register (Ref: LC/CEM(B)1/17).
The burial registers and grave registers contain information including name, age at death and grave number but, depending on the register, may also contain other information including address of the deceased, description of the deceased (i.e. wife, son, etc.), death date or burial date.
To view the records online please visit the Ancestry website at www.ancestry.co.uk Don’t forget you can get free access to the site in any of our five search rooms across the West Yorkshire Archive Service.
A handy guide on how to use the records in the Beckett Street Cemetery collection and the full catalogue of the collection is available on request from staff at the West Yorkshire Archive Service Leeds office.
If you’re interested in finding out more about the cemetery itself the Friends of Beckett Street Cemetery host regular walks around the cemetery and host a fantastic website at www.beckettstreetcemetery.org.uk
If you’ve any queries about the Beckett Street Cemetery archive collection please do contact us on 0113 393 9788 or at leeds@wyjs.org.uk
