The Churchyard¶
St Mary Magdalene’s churchyard is the only one in Thanet still open for burials, and is maintained by church volunteers. It holds several hundred years of burials, documented here through four complementary record sets compiled during a churchyard survey conducted in October 2025 by Stuart Horsburgh.
How these records relate to each other
Survey by location — a walking-order transcription of every legible memorial, grouped by physical position in the churchyard, with full inscription text and a running plot number (matching the churchyard’s numbered plan).
Names in alphabetical order — every name extracted from the survey, sorted alphabetically by surname, with dates and a cross-reference back to plot number. Also incorporates names from the parish Burials Book (from 1953) and Coles Funeral Directors’ Minster burial plan.
Named memorial stones in numerical order — a condensed index: plot number, name(s), and year of death only.
Appendix: baptism & burial register cross-references, 1700–1883 — additional genealogical detail drawn from the church’s own Baptism & Burial Registers, cross-referenced to plot numbers where a family can be confidently matched to a grave.
A “?” throughout these records marks a word, date, or reading that is uncertain from weathering or damage. Square brackets containing italic text are editorial additions — a guessed identification, a cross-reference, or biographical detail — rather than part of the original inscription.
Warning
Many identifications in these records are marked as “guesses” by the author, reconciling worn or illegible stones against the parish registers. Where the survey itself flags uncertainty, that uncertainty is preserved here rather than resolved — please treat bracketed “Guess?” notes as exactly that.
Map of the Stones in the Graveyard¶
The map of the stones in the graveyard.¶