Interested in sprucing up your community’s historic cemetery? Repairing those fallen gravestones? Need some research done on a local cemetery? Do you need advice on how to proceed with cleaning a burial ground, while protecting the site?
Well, you’ve come to the right place. Black Cat Cemetery Preservation specialises in historic gravestone and monument conservation and restoration in Canada. Below you’ll find services from cemetery workshops and assessments, to brush clearing and conservation reporting. These services are offered by husband & wife team, Robyn Lacy and Ian Petty. Together, we have a combined 20 years of experience in the heritage sector as archaeologists, gravestone conservators, and cultural heritage technicians. We have worked across Canada and the United States, as well as on the Isle of Man, recording gravestones and cemeteries, conducting archaeological surveys, mapping sites, and evaluating heritage structures and landscapes. We look forward to working with you!
If you are looking for examples of our work, please see posts on the BLOG page, linked in the bar above! We have lots of examples and details about past projects there.
Mileage follows the MUN & NL gov rates and are subject to change with gas prices.
Travel time will be billed at a reduced rate.
Overnight trips are subject to additional costs to include accommodation and per-diem for staff.
Services Offered
Best Practices for Cemetery Preservation: We offer workshops and talks over zoom or socially distanced in person in certain locations, to your community group or class on best practices for gravestone recording and conservation, do’s and don’ts for preserving your gravestones, and other aspects of cemetery archaeology.
- Cost for a 45 min – 1hr talk: $300 CAD (zoom/digital talk/in-person plus travel)
- Cost for 2 ~hr workshop on site: $500 CAD, plus Mileage & travel time (reduced travel rate @ $25/hr/staff)
- Prices subject to increase for longer lengths.
Cemetery Conditions Consulting: If you are looking at moving forward with a graveyard or cemetery clean-up and restoration project, we offer consulting services on evaluating gravestone condition, and providing ‘Do No Harm’ restoration advice for individual stones. This can be done remotely with photographs of gravestones, or in person, and will be presented in the form of an illustrated report. We have had great success with remote-consultations in 2020-2021 due to the pandemic, and all we need are photos from the site. If you’d like to know how we can help you, in person or remotely, please contact us.
- Cost for consulting & reporting:
- Site Visit – $120/hr for 1 hr site visit with 2 consultants, plus
- Mileage & travel time (reduced travel rate @ $25/hr/staff)
- Reporting – $80/hr
Cemetery Restoration: Comprehensive conservation & restoration services with a ‘Do No Harm’ approach for historic cemeteries is offered on simple and small complex monuments, the most common styles in historic sites. We raise sunken stones from below the surface, implement best-practices for conservation regarding foundation setting and stabilisation, gravestone pinning and reconstruction, and gravestone cleaning using solutions which will not cause extended deterioration of the stones, such as D/2. Working with the most up-to-date stone preservation techniques, gravestones will be cleaned and conserved in order to retain their history and inscriptions for future generations. All prices are subject to change.
- Gravestone repairs rates are determined on a case by case basis. Please contact us!
Cemetery Recording & Mapping: Historic cemeteries often have unreliable maps that do not correspond to records. With experience mapping and recording cemeteries and grave markers in Ireland, the Isle of Man, British Columbia, Newfoundland, Alberta, and Ontario, we would be more than happy to undertake mapping projects to ensure accurate, reliable records for your database and archives. If applicable, community volunteers and students can be taught to carry out recording for projects.
- Cost dependent on size of site, please contact us for an estimate today!
- Our mapping is just for site reference, as sketch-map plans, and is currently not geo-referenced
Cemetery Clean-up: Have a site that is overgrown and overwhelming? We will come and clear that brush away, to make your site more accessible!
Historic Research & Reporting: As archaeologists, we have extensive experience preparing documents and reports on the background, alterations, and evolution of historic sites. For archaeological and historical sites from the historic period, this involves historic research at archives, land registry offices, museum collections, and more in order to track down the evolution of the landscape and the site within it. If you want to look a little more about your site before moving forward, contact us!
Black Cat Cemetery Preservation 