FreeBMD will give you the registration area where somebody died, but that's probably an area of 10-20 miles radius. If somebody's not moved around much and if the local parish registers have been transcribed on FreeREG, you might get lucky. But what then?
It's a forever moving target, but there are an increasing number of websites that are photographing, recording and publishing gravestone information online. No one site has everything though - and I've probably had the best results from using Findmypast, which you can get a free trial for to see if it suits your needs for your family tree research.
For local records, every county differs - some will have extensive transcriptions freely available, others make you stump up hard cash for a downloadable PDF/CD from the local history society. You should really get to grips with the local resources in each county you're researching. Online Parish Clerks, OPCs were transcribing a lot of this information, but only in a handful of active counties.
Below are some of the sites I use when I first start searching for graves in England:
- Findagrave: Can be difficult to search - I prefer to search it from Google to land on the main page for the graveyard, then click on search all interments.
- BillionGraves: I've transcribed a few hundred headstones on this site. It can be a bit resource hungry on older PCs though.
- CWGC: The Commonwealth Graves Commission has information on people who died in, or as a result of, WW1 and WW2, among others. Along the same lines the War Graves Photographic Project tries to help people locate a specific war grave.
- Deceasedonline: An increasing number of local authorities are making records available through this site - and it can be great if you do find somebody listed as it often gives the date of death, date of burial/cremation and the location.
- GravestonePhotos: an ongoing project to photograph and list headstones.
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