Wednesday 4 May 2011

Update on Scottish War Graves and Scottish War Memorials

It isn't often that we highlight the work done by the volunteers of the Scottish War Graves Project but I've done a quick tally of the number of Scottish military headstones they have recorded and there are now well over 18,000 photographed. In fact it is a lot closer to 19,000.

Many of the stones are the Commonwealth War Graves in Scotland but just as many, if not more, are private gravestones which record loved ones lost overseas during the colonial wars of the nineteenth century and the two World Wars. It is only since the Falklands War that British war dead have been repatriated, and for the wars before then the graves were marked or unmarked in a foreign field. That meant a lot of families inscribed the details on a headstone in a local cemetery.

It's worth pointing it that unlike some other sites which record war graves the SWGP doesn't charge a fee for a photograph. They are all collected by volunteers and made available online for free.

The sister project recording Scottish War Memorials is doing well too. Here are some figures of the numbers of memorials recorded to date:

* 1400 Civic war memorials (very nearly all of Scotland's civic memorials recorded)
* 850 Church war memorials
* 700 War Memorials to individuals
* 240 Regimental and unit war memorials
* 140 School war memorials
* 525 Other Scottish war memorials

That gives a total of 3855 Scottish war memorials recorded online and available to view for free.

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