A graveyard is a burial ground attached to a church. A cemetery is an independent burial ground with no religious affiliation. That is the whole distinction. Graveyards sit on church property, were filled by that church’s congregation, and are usually small and old. Cemeteries stand on their own land, accept people of any faith or none, and are usually larger, newer and more organised.
| Graveyard | Cemetery | |
|---|---|---|
| Land | Church property | Independent site |
| Religion | Tied to one congregation | Any faith, or none |
| Size | Small, often one community | Large, many kinds of burial |
| Age | Centuries old | A more recent invention |
| Services | Rarely any | Funeral planning, monuments, memorial services |
Is a graveyard the same as a cemetery?
No. Every graveyard is a burial ground, but not every burial ground is a graveyard: the word graveyard specifically means the yard of a church. In everyday speech people use the two words interchangeably, and nobody will correct you at a funeral. The difference matters when you are choosing a burial place, because it decides who may be buried there and what the site can offer you.
What they share: both hold grave sites, headstones and mausoleums, both take cremated remains in an urn as well as traditional burials, and both exist so the living have somewhere to visit the dead.
Where is each one located?
A graveyard is in or beside a church; a cemetery is usually in a neighbourhood on land set aside for burial and nothing else. Graveyards came about as part of religious building: early settlers put up a church, and the ground around it became the burial place for that congregation. Many are still in use today. Some hold gravestones with no bodies beneath them.
A cemetery was chosen for burial from the start, which is why it tends to have rules about headstones, planting and visiting hours. The site was planned rather than inherited.
Which is bigger?
A cemetery is almost always larger. A graveyard usually holds the graves of one family or one old local community and then runs out of room, which is part of why cemeteries were created. A cemetery can hold many kinds of burial at once; it is common to find members of several religions in the same cemetery.
Which is older, a graveyard or a cemetery?
Graveyards are older. People have buried their dead in churchyards for many centuries; the cemetery is a comparatively recent answer to those churchyards filling up. Before either existed, the dead were kept close to the family home or near where they worked. Early burial grounds were often placed outside the city walls.
What can a cemetery offer that a graveyard cannot?
Cemeteries usually provide funeral planning help, monument and headstone options, and space for memorial services. Some group vaults or tombs along a path leading to a chapel. A graveyard is generally just the ground and the church it belongs to. If you are weighing up burial options for yourself or someone else, a cemetery gives you more to choose from.
Where does the word cemetery come from?
From the Latin coemeterium, meaning burial place, which came in turn from the Greek koimētērion, a bedchamber, a place of sleep.
Choosing between them
If you belong to a church with its own graveyard and there is still room, that is often the simplest and cheapest option, and it keeps you among your own community. Otherwise it will be a cemetery, and the questions to ask are what the plot costs, what the rules are on headstones and planting, and whether the site is maintained in perpetuity or on a renewable lease.
Frequently asked questions
Is a churchyard the same as a graveyard?
Nearly. The churchyard is all the ground around a church; the graveyard is the part of it used for burial. In practice the words are used interchangeably: a burial in the churchyard and a burial in the graveyard mean the same thing.
Can you be buried in a graveyard if you don’t belong to the church?
Not always: it depends more on place than on faith. Graveyards traditionally serve the church’s own congregation or parish, though in England, for example, parish residents generally hold a burial right in their churchyard, space permitting. The parish office is the place to ask. A public cemetery, by contrast, is open to people of any faith or none.
Do graveyards still accept new burials?
Some do, but many historic graveyards are closed to new burials simply because they are full, which is the very problem cemeteries were invented to solve. If a churchyard burial matters to you, ask early and get the answer in writing as part of your funeral wishes.
Whichever you choose, write it down where your family will find it. Most people never tell anyone which they would prefer, and the decision then falls to whoever is organising the funeral in the worst week of their life. You can record your burial wishes, and everything else that has to be decided, in a free end-of-life plan.
