Discover if your English ancestors were buried in Kent, the Garden of England. Search records for burials in, among others, Charlton, Dartford, Gravesend, North Cray, Longfield or Greenwich, which until 1899 was part of Kent. Find your relative’s home address, age at death and his/her place of burial. Burial records can add essential information to your growing family tree.

These records include a transcript of the original burial registers. Information in the transcripts can vary, but most will include the following:

  • Name
  • Age at death
  • Birth year
  • Burial date
  • Residence
  • Parish
  • Burial ground
  • County and country
  • Document reference
  • Repository
  • Description
  • Notes
  • Record set

Consult the North West Kent Parish Lists for a full list of all the parishes available in this collection.

Discover more about these records

These records contain transcriptions of burial records in North West Kent, including Dartford, North Cray, Gravesend, Swanscombe and Swanley. The term, North West Kent, is used to describe areas within the London boroughs which were historically part of Kent; such as, Greenwich, Bexleyheath and Chislehurst.

Kent is a county in the south east of England and is one of the Home Counties. Known as the Garden of England, because of its many orchards and hop gardens, it is bordered by Greater London, Essex, Surrey and East Sussex. Historically it would also have been a coal mining county.

There are records of those buried in North West Kent, including the inmates of several asylums, both those which cared for the mentally ill and those that cared for the sick and infirm. These records were transcribed by the North West Kent Family History Society.

The Church of England introduced formal parish records in 1537. Until the introduction of civil registration in 1837 these parish records recorded all baptisms, marriages and burials, including those of other denominations.

The earliest registers were a single volume containing all parish events. These were written in what was known as secretary hand, a highly stylised form of writing that was introduced in an attempt to introduce a legible form of writing that could be used on all official documents. Standarised forms did not appear until 1812.