Where do the old graves go?

Just a little something that is bugging me, thought someone here may know.....

Our local cemetery is over 1000 years old. Old church dating back to the times of The Doomsday Book. The church is set high on a large mound, it has gravestones around it, I think going back to 16 - 1700's then in the lower areas of the churchyard, there are more recent graves, dating back to about 1800 at the earliest. So i think the lower parts of the cemetery are more recently acquired for use as a burial ground.

So if the church dates back to Saxon times, where are all the earlier graves from all those centuries ago?

Did they bury on top and get rid of the tombstones?

Do they dig up and start again?

Just curious.

Thanks.

CX.

a reply to: CX

Were there engraved stone markers on old cemeteries way back then? Perhaps markers were made of wood and simply rotted over the years. Wasn't it Richard III who was found buried beneath some parking lot? I guess the old buildings that crumbled over time and around which burial mounds would lie are left for the Time Team to answer.

Yes, graves are reused, they dig up the bones and crush them, they either go to the garbage dumpsite or is used in fertilizing ways, or they have a special place in the graveyard where they put them to rest.
The gravestones are removed, only gravestones who are still paid for or has historical value is left.
They are probably also disposed in other ways, that we don't know about.

a reply to: CX

After that time the ground is reused and the old bone's and coffins are long turned to dust and returned to the soil, the very soil that modern bodies are buried in is filled with ancient bone fragment's and can be said to be the dust of they whom came before.

A former friend JS Ewing (He betrayed my trust by using private information about a trust my mother had been robbed of to his own benefit) who worked in the late 80's early 90's in Gothenburg at a graveyard after dropping out of university here in England when he married his first wife an ethnic Czech who was a Swedish national and whom I quite liked as a person once told me how he had to dig through the old bone's and how the soil was full of them at the very ancient graveyard he worked as a gravedigger at, after his divorce he was almost frothing at the mouth and I had to talk him down as he wanted to go back to Sweden and murder his wife burying her in the wood's, he was deadly serious (I had known him since we were kid's) but I pointed out his daughter needed her mother far more than her father no matter how much he wanted to see the kid and his vengeance for her lies at the divorce (if they were lies) was selfish and would hurt his then baby daughter far more than anything he could ever do to harm her, he then went on to continue his education at Brisbane but at the time if I had known marcella's number I would have warned her that is how concerned I was.
This guy who was contemplating murdering a woman he had professed to love only two year's earlier then went on to list UN Arab-Israeli peace negotiator on his resume, erm we see how that worked out eh, still he was persuasive personality and meticulous if far from brilliant mind, just the kind who would plan the perfect murder and he got the Rotary club to bankroll his education in Aus.

So to answer your questions they are still there just all mixed up and the new body's are buried in what is left of the old one's.

This is one of the important functions of Memorial Day in the states. You teach your descendants where your ancestors lie and visit as many of those graves to see to their upkeep as you can. Most people seem to have forgotten about it. It is also about remembering fallen veterans, too, - It's main function. But in general, it is remembrance. Not just another day off work for picnics and fun.

a reply to: ketsuko

We have lost that except for some close knit family's as Blighty is ancient as you know but with America being only a young nation it must be wonderful to touch your root's like that, I like that and I suspect that America is large enough that most graveyard's have been left undisturbed except in the city's and urban sprawl's.