Operated by East Boldre Community Stores Limited, a voluntary organisation.
Owned by it members, predominantly local people.
Community Benefit Society, number 8481
The Graveyard
With our award from the National Lottery Heritage fund we will install interpretation panels in the graveyard both to commemorate the people buried there and engage local people and visitors with the site's heritage drawing upon the information presented here.
Analysis of Burials
Analysis of the data transcribed from the burial register has revealed interesting insights into East Boldre's social history.
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Most telling is that 30% of graves on the chapel site are those of children, a sign of the high infant mortality in rural areas.
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Reduction in infant mortality over the latter part of the 19th century
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Peaks in deaths relating to epidemics
The Site's Odd Shape
By 1889 the then rectangular burial ground surrounding the church was almost filled. The church had purchased the two neighbouring two cottages in 1835 with the intention to convert these into accommodation for the church's minster. In 1889 a majority of church members voted in favour of taking in the bottom ends of the cottages' gardens in order to expand the churchyard.
This gave rise to the irregular shape of the existing site and most of the more recent graves will therefore in the dog leg section.
Graveyard Plan
There is no visible trace of the 480+ graves onsite, save for one tomb and 54 headstones tucked in an overgrown corner of the site. These were removed to the rear boundary of the chapel site by the Baptist Church prior to the hall being built in the early 1990s.
The plan here shows the graves on the site that were marked with the surviving headstones. It was created circa 1990 before the gravestones were moved. It indicates that the graves were laid out in uniform lines around the chapel across the whole of the site. The numbered plan shows their original positions but unfortunately the list linking the numbers to individual graves was lost many years ago.
We found an excerpt of the list included in the deeds for the chapel that revealed the original positions of 13 of the headstones. This was a single page from the church's correspondence with the Home Office to gain their permission prior to building the hall on the graveyard in the 1990s . Unfortunately, the Home Office did not archive the full correspondence so the rest of the list appears to have been lost.