Until 2012 almost nothing was known about the Dissenters’ Burying Ground in Falmouth, which for a century had been lying forgotten beneath thick brambles and ivy. How many people were buried there and who they were remained an unexplored mystery with many people assuming the overgrown site was a Jewish cemetery, when in fact it is Christian.

However, in the last few years a team of local volunteers have been working to restore and better understand the long-neglected cemetery by clearing it and logging all the surviving headstones.

But for three years Rob Nunn and Tom Weller, the site custodians, have also been carefully transcribing the burial registers for the Dissenting chapels at Falmouth and Penryn, both of whom used Ponsharden to bury their dead.

“The names we found on the headstone were only part of the picture,” said Tom. “We knew the monuments generally represented the wealthier members of the congregations. No one knew who else lay beneath the ground, in the unmarked graves.”

The original burial registers are held by the Cornwall Record Office, and have been gradually typed up, line by line. In all, 667 names were recorded, of which 551 are burials at Ponsharden. The poor handwriting made the task very difficult.

“We were amazed at how many bodies had gone into that small cemetery,” said Rob. “We expected there to be a hundred or so unmarked graves, but our research has reveal that there are over 350 unmarked graves on site. We think this is why the site was closed - they literally filled it to capacity.”

Rob and Tom passed their burial register transcription to the volunteers who run the Cornwall OPC (Online Parish Clerk) website, and people can now search online to see if they have a relative buried at Ponsharden.

“The Cornwall OPC website is a phenomenal research tool,” said Tom. “It contains transcriptions of over one million Cornish records including baptisms, marriages and burials. Having our data added to this invaluable collection is a great result.”

Because no one knew who was buried at Ponsharden many relatives searching for the grave of an ancestor in Falmouth or Penryn were hitting a brick wall when the name wasn’t recorded at Swanpool Cemetery or St Gluvias.

“We’ve had several cases where relatives have been looking for their ancestors for decades, but to no avail," said Tom. "They knew they had died in Falmouth or Penryn, but they couldn’t be found in the main cemeteries in the towns.

“It then turns out that their ancestor was buried at Ponsharden, of which nothing existed in the public domain which is why their search was fruitless. But since we have put our research online we’ve had a lot of people contact us who have finally found their relatives after years of searching.”

It was after new information was put online that Sarah Perrot finally tracked down the last resting place of her fourth great-grandmother, Ann Pascoe, who died in 1852. Ann was the widow of Edward Randall Pascoe, a Packet Ship commander who had fought at Trafalgar earlier in his career. “After searching in and around Falmouth for many years I was delighted to finally track down Ann’s grave online after the Dissenters cemetery had been uncovered," said Sarah. "Her gravestone still has clear lettering and dates, and it was fantastic to see it after all these years.”

Rob added: “We are very keen to get all our information easily accessible and we want to find more people who have relatives buried on site. People were still being interred there as recently as the 1930s so there must living relatives in Falmouth and Penryn today.”

To mark the burial data going online, the Dissenters’ Cemetery is being opened to the public again on Sunday (July 12) from 11am to 4pm. Printed copies of the burial registers will be on display for anyone wishing to check them.

More information on the burial registers and the open day can be found at www.ponsharden.com or through Falmouth Town Council on 01326 315559