FOR more than 600 years Chudleigh's citizens were laid to rest in its churchyard – yet the identities of many lying there are unknown and forgotten.

That is all set to change when Roger Brandon, a member of the history society, publishes details of all 285 graves on the town's website.

A survey done in the 70s listed the names and date of death, but Mr Brandon felt this wasn't adequate, considering a growing appetite for ancestor-hunting on the internet.

'We're were getting requests all the time from people chasing up ancestors and this list didn't provide much information. Also, it was apparent that, in the 40 years since the last survey was done, inscriptions were becoming unreadable.'

Several are Grade II listed – the earliest dates back to 1654 – and some have colourful stories attached to them.

One such is the grave of John Searle, who had to be buried hastily on the day of the Great Fire in 1807, to prevent his coffin going up in flames. Then there is the grave of the Crimean sharpshooter which contains no body. John Shave, a Corporal in the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusiliers, died in 1855 and was buried in the Crimea. According to the inscription he was shot through the medal he received for bravery at the Battle of Alma a year before.

Particularly pathetic are the list of infant deaths, often many in a single family.

A pair of graves, one large one small, illustrates the Victorian practice of reusing the name of a dead child on the next available sibling. The tiny grave belongs to the elder Elizabeth Heath Saunders, who died six months old in 1805. Next to it is the full size grave of her younger sister, also Elizabeth Heath Saunders who reached the age of 60, dying in 1877.

This year, St Martin and St Mary celebrates the 750th anniversary of its dedication. Mr Brandon says there was an earlier church on the site and probably an earlier graveyard.

'The early graves would have had wooden crosses which would have rotted and the Victorians were in the habit of moving old graves stones and reusing the graves.'

By 1880, fear of infection caused by overflowing graveyards prompted an Act of Parliament forbidding their future use, except to those with family tombs and cemeteries were set up instead.