A graveyard is any place set aside for long-term burial of the dead, with or without monuments such as headstones. It is usually located near and administered by a church.
Various conditions in the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century led to the burial of the dead in graveyards being discontinued. Among the reasons for this were.
Typical graveyard (St Marychurch Torquay Devon)
A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term cemetery (from Greek κοιμητήριον: sleeping place) implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are the place where the final ceremonies of death are observed. These ceremonies or rites differ according to cultural practice and religious belief.
Typical cemetery (Torquay cemetery Devon)
* A very sharp rise in the size of the population during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution
* Continued outbreaks of highly infectious diseases in towns and cities due to lack of public hygiene.
Many graveyards in cities were located on land enclosed within the city walls.
* Limits to, and lack of, space in graveyards for new headstones and dead bodies.
As a consequence of these reasons, city authorities, national governments and places of worship all changed their regulations for burials. In many European states, burial in graveyards was outlawed altogether either by royal decrees or government legislation.
In some cases, skeletons were exhumed from graveyards and moved into ossuaries or catacombs. A large action of this type occurred in 18th century Paris when human remains were transferred from graveyards all over the city to the Catacombs of Paris.
However in most places across Europe completely new places of burial were established away from heavily populated areas and outside of old towns and city centers. Many new cemeteries became municipally-owned, and thus independent from churches and their churchyards, however even these were still segregated by the faith of the deceased to be buried there.
Thus cemeteries (certainly in their modern landscaped or garden cemetery form), rather than graveyards, became the principal place of burial for the deceased and continue to this day.
