As a churchwarden, I have quite a lot to do with our village churchyard. It only goes back to 1854, but even so, a lot of the graves are unmarked, this being an area of farmland, and therefore populated in the 19th century by many very poorly paid workers (and their employers!). It makes for great fun trying to locate graves for people! The burial register makes interesting reading, and we even have a number of drownings buried here. The village is not far from a river and a canal. One is a sad story, and dates from some time in the 1860s or 70s if I remember correctly - a little girl, aged 2-3 years was found washed up on the riverbank, and buried by coroner's order, ours being the closest church. She was identified a while later, and named, from her shoe, and had fallen in the river at Castleford, 12 or 13 miles away, poor mite. There are quite a few babies, some only living a matter of hours or days. Sometimes their mothers too. Also one or two railway workers killed, as there are two lines close to us.

We keep the cemetery mowed for easy access, but quite a few places allow the older parts to remain unmowed, thus creating a nature reserve. The big, now full, cemetery in York has been classified as such.

I agree that you can learn a lot from them. The style and quality of the memorials says a lot about the affluence and trades of an area. A concentration of burials during a short timespan and all in one area may indicate an epidemic.
I'm usually on my own around midnight on Christmas Eve, clearing up after the service, but I don't feel spooked. There are no burials in the church, and only a short path to the gate.

Every couple of years or so I take the Baptism, Marriage and Burial registers into the village school (next door to the church) when the children are doing a project on the Victorians, and groups of them trace a particular family, or do tally charts on the trades of people at a particular time, or look at how long people lived.

If you take children into a cemetery, just be aware that older memorials may have become unstable. Kids will be kids, and run around. A child was killed in Harrogate a couple of years ago by a stone falling on them. We do periodic checks, but in a large cemetery, it may be easy to miss one. Even so, they can be a lovely place to sit and commune with nature.

I like that Swedish idea of freeze drying. I was always concerned that cremation caused air pollution!

Andrea