We launched a Graveyard Photographic Project in February 2020 to capture a snapshot of our local history.
The aim of the initiative was to photograph every headstone in every graveyard throughout Dumfries and Galloway, or what was known as the counties of Dumfriesshire, Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire. Whilst this is a huge task it will be less onerous the more volunteers that get involved. In addition to cameras, nowadays a great many people have Smartphones that take very good photographs and many also record the GPS location. Complete graveyards have been photographed in anything for 30 mins to 5 hours. We still need your help. If you wish to volunteer please get in touch, contact details are at the foot of this page.
The instigator of this project was Council Member, the late Terry Brown. We had many people who volunteered in assisting us with this project and if you wish to still do so, or if you have any questions, please contact Photostudy coordinator at photostudy@dgfhs.org.uk or write to Photostudy c/o The Research Centre, 9 Glasgow Street, Dumfries DG2 9AF.
This was a massive task, but with the help of a vast army of individuals, from all over the world, interested in Family History throughout our area we are creating this wonderful archive.
Background
There are 243 Burial Grounds, Cemeteries, Graveyards and Extensions throughout Dumfries and Galloway. A single location may have multiple graveyards being an Old Parish Churchyard, a New Cemetery and a “Modern” Cemetery or a Cemetery Extension.
For many of these we hold Memorial Inscription booklets however it takes so long to manually transcribe the stones in a cemetery and people don’t have the time to spend months or years(!) to visit cemeteries, transcribe them, then type up the memorials.
Every year headstones deteriorate further and even now many are unreadable.
Rationale
Testing has proved that graveyards can be photographed in between 30 minutes to 5 hours, depending on size. Also, we are able to read 90/95% of these inscriptions using a computer.
Many people now have access to a decent camera with the development of Smartphones and these can also record the GPS location enabling us to find a grave again. This makes it easier to return to stones we have not been able to read to try to manually transcribe them.
The Graveyard Photographic Project will be available to researchers at our Family History Centre where they can view the photographs without travelling around the area and without needing to worry about weather conditions.
In the future these photos can be used to create new or update our existing Memorial Inscription booklets.
Can you still help?
We are trying to create a snapshot of our Local History and we hope you will want to be part of it.
We are still seeking people willing to spend only a few hours to photograph nearby graveyards. If you want to do more that would be great.
If you have an interest in assisting with completing this really useful project then please contact us at photostudy@dgfhs.org.uk. We would like to thank all the volunteers who have so far contributed over 143,000 images to our project.
We have now completed 215 Cemeteries, being 88% of the total. This is a fantastic result by our intrepid volunteers and we say thank you to them all.
We do still require volunteers from or near Wigtownshire to photograph graveyards in the area from Newton Stewart to Drummore and Leswalt, so if you are able to assist us please email your details to photostudy@dgfhs.org.uk.
This page will continue to be updated to show our progress.
Thank you,
Photostudy Coordinator
13 January 2026