HEADSTONES at a village church, some dating back almost 90-centuries, have been cleaned up and recorded to make it easier for families to trace their routes.

Volunteers in West Parley have been restoring and recording inscriptions on headstones at the historic All Saints Church on Church Lane next to the River Stour.

All the names have now been successfully recorded on the church website to make it easier for people to find family members’ names.

Rector Charles Booth praised the work of the volunteers.

“I am most grateful for the immense amount of work the volunteers have done for the church and community,” he said.

“We already had a record of the newer headstones as they were easier to read but we now have a complete record of all the headstones, some dating back to the late 1600s.

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“An index of all the family names and maps of where the headstones are located is now on the church website so family members are easy to find.

“If anyone is researching their family history and has a relative buried at All Saints it is worth coming along to have a look. Otherwise there is a record of each inscription and anyone can contact me for full details.”

Volunteer John Cullen said the project will help uncover the stories that may have previously been lost to time.

“Before we started the work you could not read much of the inscriptions on most of the stones but with a lot of careful cleaning we were able to see all the hidden details of our local history open up in front of us,” he said.

“There are many headstones for significant local families with their history recorded over many generations. There are some sad stories revealed by the headstones but it was a privilege for us to be working around the church, which is over 800 years old.”

Volunteer team leader John Dinsdale said: “We were happy to support this project as it made an interesting change from the usual work we do each week to improve the look of the village, keep it clean and tidy and repair and renovate any parish items identified by the parish council.

“Charles and his team are always working to promote unity in our community. We all enjoyed being able to play a part in this project. It was one of the most interesting and rewarding things we have done.”

The West Parley Volunteers have been giving up their time to support keeping the village tidy since 2008.

There is a group of residents who litter pick all the roads, a workgroup of sometimes up to 17 residents who meet twice a week to carry out maintenance and repair work and who plant and maintain the many planters on roadsides across the village.

Some of these volunteer also help to support the local volunteer car scheme to assist local residents to get about.