The heritage group, of Friends of Heene Cemetery, have celebrated researching and writing about all the 1960 souls interred in the graveyard. We met for a breakfast at Marine Gardens Café to mark this event. Sue Standing, Angela Levy, Carol Sullivan, Maggi Martin , Pat Brownbill and Jackie Rooney (with her lovely husband Chris) attended the breakfast, but Liz Lane was unable to join us. We also recognised the work of past members: Sophie Watts, Matt Bury and Gail Warner-Clarkson. This event served as a regular heritage group meeting in which we discussed our recent work and future projects. Sadly, Angela has now retired from the group after more than 5 years of intensive research.
The work of researching the lives of the buried began in earnest in the year 2020 building 
on Liz's associated stories written for the ‘Botolph Bell’ several years earlier. Carol and Sue also undertook some preliminary work before the start of the official project to shine a light on the residents of Heene Cemetery.
Each life took at least 10 hours to identify, research and write up, many with photographs and several with newspaper clips and obituaries. This represents about 30,000 hours of volunteer work over 5 years which was made possible by self-funded, subscriptions to sites such as: ‘Ancestry’, ‘FindMyPast’ and 'British Newspaper Archive'. The stories were initially published on the bespoke, website funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. In the last year the stories have been transferred to our own excellent, website. The website was created by FoHC volunteer, Rob Tomlinson and the burial data migration was engineered by Pat Brownbill. Additionally, entries for each of the buried have been made on a dedicated 'Ancestry' website.
The published stories have attracted new interest in the cemetery. Relatives have visited Heene Cemetery where they have been warmly welcomed and shown their ancestors' graves. Visits and enquiries have been made from far afield including: Australia, Spain, U.S.A., India and Canada.
The heritage research showed that 180 children, 1079 women and 698 men were interred between 1873 and 1977 before the cemetery was closed. 421 spinsters, 97 bachelors, 658 wives and 601 husbands were among the dead. There were similar numbers of husbands and wives but many more spinsters than bachelors – reflecting the congregation of the local church.
FoHC Heritage Group
l-r Maggi, Carol, Pat, Angela, Sue, Chris and Jackie