Woodgrange Park Cemetery was opened in 1889 and is located on the borders of Manor Park and Forest Gate in London's East End.  It was, and has continued to be, unconsecrated, privately owned and managed. The site includes a range of different types of graves, including:

Private Graves, where a plot or vault is purchased and a 'deed of right of burial' is issued to a registered holder. This does not mean that the holder owns the land, rather that they have the right, during the period stated, to say who can be buried in the grave space. These graves may be marked with a memorial, but this is not always the case.  

Public (or common) Graves, where a number of unrelated people are buried together in one grave and no right of burial exists.  Public graves are not normally marked with a memorial and it is not possible to identify the exact spot where an individual was buried. Public graves are normally (but not always) denoted by having a letter or symbol in the grave number. It is very unlikely that we could find a specific location of a public grave on the ground. 

A portion of the Cemetery was sold off for housing development as a result of the Woodgrange Park Cemetery Act, 1993. Any graves in the affected area were professionally removed by a specialist exhumation company and re-interred in the area known as the Memorial Avenue.  It is not possible to locate individual graves that were re-buried in the memorial avenue.  

Prior to the mid-1980's, computer-based records are patchy and we would normally have to undertake a manual search of our burial registers. The historic maps of the Cemetery are not sufficiently detailed to locate a specific grave (just a large general area) and so if you do not know the location of a particular grave, we will need to carry out a physical search on the ground to try to locate it. If a grave has not been visited for many years (abandoned) then we may not be able to reach it without carrying out extensive clearance work.  If this is the case, we will advise you and establish whether you are prepared to pay for us to reach the grave so that you can visit it. 

We charge £47.00 to carry out a basic search of our burial registers and £63.00 for an enhanced search which includes physically locating the grave on the ground. We cannot guarantee that after paying for a search, we will find the grave you are looking for.  Woodgrange Park is a private Cemetery and does not receive any public funds (unlike a Local Authority Cemetery).  To enable us to continue to maintain the paths and roadways, pick up litter, clear undergrowth etc. we need to charge fees for any work that our staff carries out.  Charging for a grave search covers the cost of staff answering your emails and telephone calls, looking up the details of the grave in our records, and meeting people to show them the location of their grave (or giving directions if you cannot visit during our office opening times). We can provide a photograph of the grave if you are unable to visit. 

If you would like us to carry out a grave search on your behalf, please complete the form below.  We will need the deceased person's full name and their date of death (preferably the month and year as minimum).