About Us

An introduction by Karen Holroyd

Ancestors Alcove is a family venture to bring you information about our local area which spans the geographical triangle in Lancashire from Chorley to Bolton to Wigan. Our aim is to help family historians whose ancestors lived within this triangle.

We noticed there is a lack of burial information available on the Internet, yet this is vital to family historians. It can be the icing on the cake to find a burial or gravestone of your ancestors and this is just one of the services we bring to you. We take down the whole inscription, not just names and dates.

Gravestones are often overlooked as a valuable source of information as it is very time consuming. As well as holding the all important death date and age they may contain a date of birth (useful if born pre-1837) and do explain relationships. In older graves there are many married women buried with their parents which will give a maiden name, also children are frequently buried with grandparents. There can often be 3 or 4 generations in one grave and more than one family name. They may help you solve a problem of multiple marriages if a man is buried with 2 or 3 wives or a widow has remarried.

We aim to bring you accurate gravestone information, however, due to age, weathering and some styles of carving, they can sometimes be difficult to read and may contain some errors. Please contact us if you find an error and have an alternative so we can go back and check it.

Please note: We list all the names mentioned on each grave but this does not necessarily mean they are all buried there.

We will be bringing you the baptisms and marriages not held on the I.G.I. Please contact us for a full list of our coverage.

Whether you need help starting your family tree as a beginner or have hit a brick wall, we are here to help. Unfortunately, we cannot get involved in cases of finding missing or living people.