Cemetery and Memorial Parks – Barbados

Welcome to the website of Barbados Cemeteries. This is the place to find out about all of the cemetery’s care and activities.

Barbados Cemeteries are working burial grounds. Yet at the same time, they need to take opportunities for conservation, education through history, and informal recreation within a beautiful environment which in time would be concidered a park. Trustees, staff, Friends, and volunteers will all work to achieve the right balance between the provision of a community facility and support for the environment.

If your particular interest is genealogy and family history, you will want to visit the companion website, www.cemeterygenealogy.bb. A knowledgeable and enthusiastic group of specialist volunteers maintain the website, which concentrates on this important aspect of Barbados Cemeteries.

Barbados Cemetery: Aim to become fun places to spend an afternoon, a beautiful place to spend eternity.

The formation of the Barbados National Federation of Cemetery Friends will be the result of heritage and conservation minded groups concerned about the decline in care of our ancient cemeteries meeting like minded volunteers. The threat to these important burial grounds from developers and negligent owners and managers of the cemeteries was the motivation to the conservationists to make a positive and practical stand. In some cases local groups formed specifically to influence public opinion against a threat to a particular cemetery and later started researching the heritage and “promoting” the site with guided walks. In other cases the friends formed to either preserve the wildlife and fauna or to make the cemetery more widely appreciated by taking walks, publishing guide books and giving talks. The Federation would be established  mainly from smaller groups and have members from all over. The cemetery care organisations have now spread to an international level and working with the Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe and aims to have associate members in other countries.

Many cemeteries have become sanctuaries for rare plants, fungi, fauna and animals (as well as parks for people). As pressure grows on the adequate provision of burial space in Barbados, the subject of cemeteries is now coming back onto the political agenda. The Federation works with the Ministry of Justice [Coroners’ Division] and other NGO’s in considering provisions for proposed new burial laws in Barbados.