"Whenever I go on holiday anywhere, I visit the cemetery," said Mr. Elliott.

He said the first time he walked into the St. Peter's graveyard, while on vacation with his wife, he thought he'd "died and gone to heaven" – pun intended.

"I was tremendously excited because the variety of markers here is almost unparalleled," he said.

St. Peter's graveyard was first started in 1612, and in the early 1700s a western end of the graveyard was opened for black Bermudians.

It contains many layers of graves so that today, the ground is significantly higher than in days gone by. Many noteworthy Bermudians and residents were laid to rest here including printer Joseph Stockdale, American Anne Willing Bingham, whose portrait appeared on the first American liberty coin, Pilot James Darrell and many others.

What makes the graveyard so fascinating for Mr. Elliott is that the headstones have been brought in from many diverse places including Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Rhode Island in the United States and London, England among other places.

"You get these wonderful monuments inside the church to Bermuda officials, military officers and so forth, some by the top London sculptors," said Mr. Elliott.

"Then outside you get these monuments that have been beautifully carved despite the fact that porous Bermuda stone doesn't take fine carving very well."

Governor Alured Popple, who served as governor from 1738 to 1744, is thought to be buried close to the north east side of the church under a pillared monument.

Unfortunately, the inscription has disappeared.

"Inscriptions on this stone have to be in very large letters and very deeply cut which is why it is often just initials and a date," said Mr. Elliott.

Mr. Elliott thought that Governor Popple's grave would originally have been plastered, and possibly painted.

"It would have been quite colourful initially," said Mr. Elliott. "It is possible the inscriptions would have been painted on, although I don't really know."

Inscriptions on the oldest graves in the churchyard have worn away completely.

For those that are still there, but hard to read, Mr. Elliott recommended visiting them at different times of day, or even using a hand mirror to try and reflect light over the wording.

"You have to be careful about using any kind of materials around these stones," he said. "Sometimes you never know what chemicals are in the rain these days.

"Sometimes you can get a reaction from the most seemingly innocuous substance once the rain hits it, and it can do harm or damage to the stones. It is best to do things that are not invasive."

He and his wife first came to Bermuda on a trip in 1999. Both history buffs, they were impressed by the Royal Naval Cemetery on Ireland Island.

"It is also a treasure trove of markers from all over the place," Mr. Elliott said. "It is not as old as St. Peter's graveyard.

"The oldest stone there is 1817, but you get a lot of sandstone markers. Some of them are carved on the Island. Some of them are really charming in their primitiveness.

"You also get a tremendous number of markers from Halifax that carry on right through into the 20th century."

He said that when the construction of the Dockyard began in 1809, many of the construction materials found their way into graveyards.

"Even though the Dockyard was constructed of the hard Walsingham formation, there was a steady import of material for trim and subsidiary work such as roof slate and things like that," he said.

"In the western part of the Island some of that material was liberated to produce gravestones."

He said some of the people working to build the Dockyard were skilled stonemasons and cutters, including one man called William Muchmore. There are at least a dozen headstones in the Royal Naval Cemetery signed by Muchmore and a scattering of them in other churchyards around Bermuda.

"One of the other things they did in the 19th century was they used roof slate," said Mr. Elliott. "Slate was fairly easy to carve and portable.

"The military graveyard on Grenadier Lane is full of these little roof slates that have been inscribed and then fitted into a surround of Bermuda stone. They are in memory of soldiers who died of yellow fever."

Repeated yellow fever epidemics put tremendous pressure on local graveyards.

St. Peter's graveyard actually closed in the early 1850s during one Yellow Fever epidemic and there was also discussion of closing the graveyard at St. John's church in Pembroke.

"In St. George's they started burying people in what became the town cemetery, behind the town on what is now the golf course," said Mr. Elliott. "They decided that with the wave of illness it was just too dangerous to have an overcrowded burial ground in the middle of the town."

Although infant mortality was very high in the 18th century, that didn't stop wealthier parents from putting up expensive monuments to their lost children.

The headstone of three-year-old Samuel Higgs, who died in the 1700s, was brought from Newport, Rhode Island and was carved there by John Bull.

"The parents must have had substantial means to bring a stone in from Rhode Island to mark the grave of a three-year-old child," said Mr. Elliott. "It is quite remarkable. It is a form of slate."

The prevailing trade routes and sea-going connections primarily determined where the stones came from.

In the 1800s, Bermudians could order gravestones from Halifax through a local shipping agent.

Now, Bermuda graveyards are a better place to see certain types of headstones than the actual place they came from.

"You are very fortunate here that you are not getting acid rain," said Mr. Elliott. "A lot of 19th century white marble stones in North America have been very badly effected by acid rain.

"Even in the 19th century the sulphur fumes from coal fires in the cities did a real number on them as well.

"Most of the stones in Bermuda are still in very good shape. I know around Ottawa a lot of the stones are not as easy to read as when I first went looking at them 20 years ago."

As part of the Historical Heartbeats Lecture Series the public will get a rare opportunity to view the secret graves of St. Peter's Church including those underneath the church at 6.30 p.m. tomorrow. Light refreshments will be served.