A Leicester historian's idea to research early 20th century Jewish gravestones grew into a restoration project of the entire Jewish sections of a cemetery.

Rosalind Adam, author of Jewish Voices - an oral history of the Leicester community - aimed to find out about a few of the earliest Jewish families buried in Leicester's Gilroes Cemetery in order to produce a book about their lives.

But once she and her small team began cataloguing the gravestones they decided to include all of the Jewish headstones in a website.

It took a year to complete the project but the website now holds basic data for every Jewish person buried in the cemetery, a search function, and a cross-section of 16 people with in-depth profiles.

"The Lives Behind the Stones" project received a £20,000 Heritage Lottery grant and the restoration work was carried out by a team of six, plus 40 volunteers.

The amount of work was phenomenal but it has been a worthwhile job

There were almost 1,000 gravestones, dating from 1902 to the present day, which were individually photographed and researched. A number of the headstones were damaged or had missing names, and some of the cemetery's earliest records were found to have misspelled the names of Jewish immigrants.

"Each little piece takes time, but you just keep chipping away at it to build up a picture of people. The amount of work was phenomenal but it has been a worthwhile job. I feel very proud of what we have achieved," said Mrs Adam.

Among the discoveries made was the burial plot of Alderman Sir Mark Henig, a high profile politician in the 1960s. As a result of the project the cemetery has new information boards providing the names and plot coordinates for every headstone and every plot without a stone has been given a plaque.

Leicester council has also tidied up the Jewish sections of the graveyard.

"I think other communities need to think about doing this and how much joy they can get out of it," said Mrs Adam.