How much do you know? I mean, names and dates, rather than having actual documents? We've managed to trace some branches of the family back to the 1700s from a starting point of a few names and dates and family legends - heck, my friend Molly gave me the names of her parents and their siblings, the town they came from and a very approximate date of birth, and I've taken them back another two generations from there. You can do quite a lot on ancestry.co.uk based on a limited starting point...but luck plays a big part in it.
Or did you just mean tracing the graves? If you know names and dates of death but not where the graves are, if you at least know which cemetery they were most likely to have been buried in, you can usually contact whoever is in charge of that cemetery and ask them to pull up the records for you. In this case, because I knew the plot numbers and because the records were computerised, there was no charge. But they do offer a chargeable service for locating graves - I could give them names and dates of death, and they would search their records to find out where they were buried (something like £18 for 5 searches). We're thinking of doing it for some of the folk we don't have plot details for. It could be worth looking into for you, too.
no subject
Or did you just mean tracing the graves? If you know names and dates of death but not where the graves are, if you at least know which cemetery they were most likely to have been buried in, you can usually contact whoever is in charge of that cemetery and ask them to pull up the records for you. In this case, because I knew the plot numbers and because the records were computerised, there was no charge. But they do offer a chargeable service for locating graves - I could give them names and dates of death, and they would search their records to find out where they were buried (something like £18 for 5 searches). We're thinking of doing it for some of the folk we don't have plot details for. It could be worth looking into for you, too.