Are grave memorials and graveyards as a whole a useful and reliable source for local history? This study demonstrates that the answer must be yes, as it presents a comparative analysis of evidence from churchyards at Wootton Wawen, King's Norton and a range of others in Birmingham. Shorters collates information relating to life expectancy, family structure, marriage patterns, attitudes to death and disposal to determine the extent to which the different churchyards represented different socio-economic trends. Investigating the issue of an urban-rural divide is uppermost in this study.