© © Susan Eldridge September 2005

The cemetery gates looking towards the War Memorial.

Location:   Blackburn Cemetery was started in 1857 and is situated off Whalley New Road which is the A666.

OS ref 103: SD 689 302

Originally it contained three chapels, one for each of the main denominations, these have since been demolished, but the original Registrars House remains. During the latter decades of the 19th century burials there averaged around 1500 a year.

The burial records are available on microfilm at the Lancashire Records Office. They are divided into three sections, Church of England, Non-conformist and Roman Catholic. 

For each section there is an alphabetical index giving surname, first names, folio number (essential when looking for a burial in the main registers) grave number and purchase number. The purchase numbers may be consulted in volumes which have not been filmed at the Records Office and give details of the person buying that particular plot. Many burials however were in common graves.

The burial registers give the information illustrated below:

1895   folio no 664             Lily Livesey  daughter of  James William and Mary      aged 9 years

Place where death occurred:  Whittle Springs   (and in this case also home address  36 Pendle St)

Date of burial:   June 6th           Grave no. O16504

Parish from which removed:    Whittle Springs

The last column may give additional information:        Killed falling from a lurry.

I have extracted most of the burial entries for the following three surnames .

If you think you have an ancestor buried in Blackburn Cemetery with one of the above surnames you may e-mail for the full entry. 

susan2153@yahoo.co.uk

At present my list is  handwritten exactly as extracted, although I do intend to enter it into a proper database at some time in the future.

Although I have details of around  40 ancestors who are buried in the cemetery very few actually have a gravestone which is a pity since they can often give a  great deal of information.

click below for photos and information of graves

The address of the Blackburn Cemetery Office is:

They may be able to tell you who is buried in a particular grave and their date of burial if you supply a name, date of death or grave number. There is a charge for this.

Microfilmed copies of the burial registers and surname indexes can be found at the Lancashire Record Office in Preston and also at Blackburn Library. Also now available at Preston are microfilms of the occupants of graves, so if you know the burial details of one ancestor you can now find who else is buried in the same grave, this can be particularly useful for finding female ancestors who have married, see the example below:

Grave O16810

 All these people are related, Betsy Dawson was married to Benjamin Thompson and the first two are their infant sons. Betsy left Benjamin in the late 1890s to live with Joseph Dawson, Elizabeth Dawson Thompson is their daughter.

The two Slater boys are the sons of Betsy & Benjamin's daughter Rebecca and Bertha Aspin who died in 1949 is another daughter under her married name.

So as you can see this grave gave me two previously unknown female marriages and also the fact that Betsy and Joseph eventually married which in turn led to finding the death of Benjamin Thompson.

updated 01-01-2006