This is the home page of the “Our stones, our stories” part of the The Jewellery Quarter Cemeteries Project (incorporated in the Jewellery Quarter BID).

In 2021, we worked with the Jewellery Quarter Academy who hosted an after-school Heritage Club for youngsters from the academy and other local schools.

The group did some class work then went out to the Key Hill cemetery to investigate the stones that were there, guess where some stones may have been buried, then uncover them. All the surveys used archaeological techniques that helped uncover the heritage of the site and the people commemorated in the cemetery using sites like Ancestry to research the people, their community links and build the story of their heritage and place in the community.

This site tells how we got on during the project, what we did, what we achieved and what we are going to do about discovering the stories of some of the people commemorated.  What we learned, informed the narrative of the people of the Birmingham, their communities, how they are memorialised and how they were a part of Birmingham’s development and not just residents’ of the Jewellery Quarter cemeteries.

Note: Some of what we learned made us feel uncomfortable, though it is good to see how things have changed a lot the stories – good and bad – are documented.