Cemetery Preservation & You!

On October 28th we (Robyn Lacy and Ian Petty of Black Cat Cemetery Preservation) had the opportunity to present some of our work from the 2021 field season at the Annex and the Admiralty House in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland. It was a great experience, and our first time speaking publicly about our gravestone preservation efforts and goals! It was also our first time speaking publicly since the pandemic started, although Robyn has given several online talks, and it was great to be in a room with people all interested in a similar topic again. Thank you to the Admiralty House Manger Elsa Simms for inviting us, and for everyone who came out on that cold evening to chat about graves!

Ian working on cleaning a gravestone in Little Heart’s Ease, NL, 2021.

Robyn discussing the restoration of a sandstone chest tomb at the Old Burial Ground, Fredericton, NB (The Daily Gleaner 2021)

A bit about us to start! We are Robyn and Ian, co-founders and directors of Black Cat Cemetery Preservation! Robyn Lacy is a historical archaeologist and is currently in the 2nd year of her PhD at MUNL, studying 17th-century burial ground development, in the Archaeology department. She has worked as a cultural heritage specialist, field archaeologist, and gravestone conservator, and published her first book, ‘Burial and Death in Colonial North America’ in 2020. Ian Petty is also a historical archaeologist, in the 1st year of his interdisciplinary PhD at MUNL, where he studies historic logging in Newfoundland and Labrador, between the Archaeology, Geography, and History departments. He has previously worked as a field archaeologist and museum technician across the US and in Newfoundland. We founded BCCP in 2020, after recognizing the need for heritage professionals in the province who knew how to safely preserve historic gravestones, and have been having the most wonderful time meeting and working with all kinds of folks in so many communities.  

Damaged gravestone. Robyn Lacy, 2019

Historic burial grounds are important resources for historical, archaeological, and genealogical research, as well as tangible links to past communities and landscapes. It’s important to conserve these resources for future generations. Learning how to preserve these sites and take care of them is important! These spaces are often physically neglected, lacking the resources or interest necessary to perform services like basic landscaping; this neglect often encourages vandalism or perpetuates the idea that HBGs (Historic Burial Ground), given that the spaces are seen as undesirable and unattended. Conversely, landscaping maintenance comes with its own set of issues, and commonly-used equipment like weed-whackers (see image, Lacy 2019)  and lawnmowers can greatly damage gravemarkers when not used carefully..

Academic and professional gatekeeping is a major issue in the field of conservation, as it is often difficult for volunteers and local organizations to access resources with up-to-date conservation advice and practices. While professional conservators often fear that untrained individuals will undertake projects that are too complex without possessing the correct skill and technique, refusal to share this information can lead to more significant problems. 

There are two important things to always remember before starting any kind of repair, cleaning, or conservation on a historic gravestone. You always need to get the express permission from the managing party of the cemetery / burial ground. They might have advice or policies over safety that need to be abided by. Secondly, always double check conservation resources to ensure you have the best, more up-to-date information on treatment. A lot of websites will give you outdated information on how to clean or restore gravestones that could ultimately hurt the stone. Read up, double check where your information comes from, and when in doubt, email someone like us! Most people involved in heritage are happy to answer questions from people interested in our history. 

chemical weathering on sandstone

biological weathering

physical weathering

physical weathering

Above are just a few examples of natural weathering processes that happen to gravestones (and all stone), as the result of just being outside. There are three types of weathering: Chemical, Physical, and Biological weathering.

When you see black staining on marble, that is the result of chemical weathering, caused by acid rain. Iron-staining is also a chemical weathering process, as can a sort of ‘melting’ effect in softer stone like sandstone, which is impossible to reverse. 

Physical weathering is caused by processes like freeze-thaw, which cause the stone to expand and contract. Water can get inside and freeze, causing expansion, and pieces of the stone break off. Physical weathering can also be caused when a stone gets too hot, such as on a hot summer day, and it is hit by the water from a cold sprinkler. This is actually how a lot of tougher granite monuments are broken. 

Biological weathering is often a huge issue for stone conservation. Plants eat into the surface of the stone, taking away physical pieces and weakening the structure. Sometimes cleaning a stone will be enough to give the stone a few more years, but sometimes the processes of weathering have run their course, and there is nothing left to do.

All 19th century gravestone imagery photos from Brick Street Cemetery, London, Ontario (Lacy 2019). 

The above are some examples of gravestone imagery by carvers in London, Ontario, but can also be found all over Newfoundland during the 19th century. Iconography has long been a source of fascination and wonder for visitors to historic cemeteries, and these are just a few examples of the variety of imagery you’ll see when visiting the historic sites in our province. By the 19th century, images on gravestones had taken on a variety of images, often considered to be a ‘softening’ of death, or a reinterpretation of death. Gravestones often have images of the bible held in hands, or hands pointing to heaven or sometimes to the physical body below the stone. Broken flowers represent a life taken, and willow trees show sorrow. A favourite of ours is the clasped hands, the ‘last goodbye’, often on the gravestones of a husband or wife. If you look closely at the shift cuffs, you can often see details of a man’s buttoned shirt collar and a woman’s ruffled shirt, and sometimes one of the hands looks a little more...decayed, or even skeletal! Finally, a common image on gravestones is a lamb, curled up on the grass. A lamb is typically used to mark the grave of a child, a ‘a lamb of god’, and is a sobering image to find, but also seems to convey a sense of peace. 

Now, if you are interested in volunteering to help clean up a local cemetery or graveyard in your community, there are some important Do’s and Don’ts that you’re going to want to familiarize yourself with before getting started! 

Do’s: 

1. If the gravestone is laying on the ground, use a soft brush to sweep off rocks so they do not scratch the surface.
2. Carefully scrape off dry biological material if it is safe to do so, with a dull wood spatula, to keep from scratching the stone. For larger plants like ivy, cut at the base & wait for the plant to die before removing, or the roots may destroy the stone.
3. To start cleaning, spray the stone with water & gently scrub the surface with a brush. Only use plastic or natural bristles. Water does a fantastic job of cleaning!
4. For more intense cleaning, purchase D/2 Biological Solution & mix 1:1 ratio with water. Spray onto surface of stone & let it sit or gently scrub to clean off staining & lichens! 

To start cleaning, water is often the best tool! Water and a plastic or natural bristle brush, and a little elbow grease will get a lot of the grime off gravestones. For more difficult stains, we recommend using D/2, which is a neutral cleaner with no acids or salts in it. Household cleaners, bleach, and other substances can cause irreparable damage to the gravestone, and we’ll talk about why on the next slide. 

Don’ts:

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1. Never use a wire brush on gravestones. While they seem to do a really good job of removing lichens and mosses, they also scratch up the stone and break off pieces of the surface. This damage is irreversible.
2. Do not take rubbings of a gravestone. Even though text might look illegible, a rubbing will actually cause the stone to weather and wear away even fast, due to the pressure on the stone. Instead, use a flashlight to create oblique lighting to read weathered text, and use photos in different lighting, or your fingertips!
3. Never use household cleaners on gravestones. Even though dishsoap and other cleaners seem ok, they contain acids and salts that sink into the surface of the stone, expand, and break the stone from the inside out. Even though stone looks like it’s so solid, it is actually extremely susceptible to damages like this.
4. Do not use powders to help read a gravestone. Just like cleaners, the powders can get into the stone and expand, breaking the stone. They are very dangerous for the conservation of the stone.
5. Never use a power washer to clean a gravestone. While it will make it look clean and shiny for the time being, the power washer strips the physical surface of the stone off, making it weather and fall apart even faster.
6. Do not pull biological matter off a stone. The way that lichens, mosses, and vines attaches themselves is by eating into the calcium carbonate in the stone, and rooting into the pores and holes in the stone. By pulling off plants, pieces of rocks will be pulled out too.
7. Never put a gravestone in cement. This is my favourite topic, as an aficionado of lime mortars. An old conservation technique for gravestones used to be to set them in cement ‘cairns’ or to put them back together with cement. Unfortunately not only can the cement not be removed without extreme difficulty or sometimes at all, the cement actually does damage to the stone itself, by preventing moisture from leaving the stone. Think of an old brick wall that has been repointed with cement. After some time, the bricks will start falling apart, leaving you with a honeycomb of cement. If you point the wall with limestone mortar instead of cement, you create a fixture that is flexible and wicks moisture out of the bricks. Eventually the mortar crumbles and has to be repointed, but that is much better than replacing the entire wall, and this only happens after about 100 years! We use lime mortar to fix gravestones into bases or keys and to repair cracks for the same reason, to allow the stone to breathe and not crumble.  

a wall of weathering sandstone caused by concrete mortar

damage to a limestone gravestone from pulling vines off

And there you have it! Gravestone conservation is rewarding work, but you should only undertake complicated repairs or work on historic gravestones with proper training and permissions. If you’re interested in having Black Cat work on a project for you, or you’re interesting in reading more about our work, please check out our website:

blackcatcemeterypreservation.wordpress.com, or find us on Facebook or Instagram @blackcatpreservation. 

Thanks for reading! 

Robyn Lacy and Ian Petty