A graveyard is a place where people are buried after they die. It is usually attached to a church and only allows followers of the religion to be buried there.

When the churchyard fills up, independent cemetery sites emerge. These are often separated from the church and can allow non-churchgoers to be buried there.

Churchyard

Churchyards are patches of land adjoining a church that is owned by the church itself, in most Christian countries. They were used to bury people who could not be buried in or under the church itself.

Before modern cemeteries were opened, churchyards were the only place where burial was allowed. They were also used for a variety of other purposes, such as playing games and having picnics. They might have a stoup, where people would dip their finger in holy water before entering the church.

They might also have a lytch gate, which was designed to protect the coffin and pallbearers from the rain as they waited for a priest to arrive to conduct the funeral service. Many had bell towers. A few had a porch altar where marriage contracts and legal agreements were signed. Some had rooms above the porch that were used for parish or charity schools. Others had iron rings for horses to be tethered to while their owners went into the church for services.

Cemetery

A cemetery is land that has been designated for the burial of human bodies or cremains. In the past, this was usually a churchyard burial ground, but nowadays it may be a separate location. Cemetery management involves the allocation of space for burial, digging and filling of graves, and constructing and maintaining memorial markers such as headstones or plaques.

The word cemetery derives from the Greek koimeterion, meaning “sleeping place.” Early individual grave sites reflected the social class of the deceased person and often included crypts beneath the church for nobles and wealthy families. As populations grew, overcrowded churchyards became dangerously unhealthy due to the putrefaction of corpses infiltrating the water supply and causing epidemics.

In Stranger Sins, you manage a graveyard which has many features to unlock, such as an Undertaker Hut, Kings Mausoleum and a Church. You can also fish, reanimate zombies and complete quests. This is a great game to play with friends, or on your own!

Burial Ground

During the Middle Ages, wealthy congregants were buried inside churches in crypts, while less affluent members of the congregation were interred outside in what came to be known as the churchyard. Later, new places for burying people that were separate from churches appeared and became known as cemeteries.

The 419 burials from the former African Burial Ground have been reburied at the Ted Weiss Federal Building at 290 Broadway. The site also houses an interpretive center with five public artworks, all of which were commissioned by the General Services Administration and designed by Rodney Leon.

Many families who purchased burial plots years ago have died without using those grave sites. This creates the possibility of re-using those burial sites, although the cemetery would need to contact living family members who have legal rights to use those grave spaces. If those rights cannot be located, the cemetery would have to place a marker over a gravesite that has been empty for decades.

Graveyards

A cemetery is a burial ground that isn’t affiliated with a church and is therefore a more secular final resting place. It also usually has more space than a graveyard, and its rules are generally more liberal regarding headstones than those of a graveyard.

Until the early 19th century, churches had a complete monopoly on all burials and therefore controlled all the churchyards in which people were buried. But as populations grew rapidly, these church-affiliated graveyards began to fill up. That’s when independent sites, known as cemeteries, started to appear.

Many people use the terms cemetery and graveyard interchangeably, but there is a difference in the meaning of the words. A graveyard is a small burial ground attached to or within a church, whereas a cemetery is a large burial ground that’s not affiliated with any specific church and is more secular. The etymology of both words is quite interesting. “grave” and “yard” both derive from the Greek word koimeterion, which means sleeping place.

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