burial

Holes, moles and other graveyard musings

7 December 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: burial

Posted by Kitty

ED’S NOTE: Kitty is a relatively new commenter on the blog. She emailed the following to us, and we are pleased to post it. Come one, come all, we say. 

I’m not that keen on cats and my name’s not really Kitty. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and being anonymous seems the sensible option.

But I am interested in funerals – good or otherwise.

I was walking through a graveyard with my husband (I’ll call him Tom – I’ve always liked that name) when we both noticed there were a lot of flower holders. Well, that’s what I thought they were, even though not a single one contained any flowers.

Tom asked, ‘What are those holes for?’

I replied, ‘It’s in case someone is buried alive. They can shout through the holes and be rescued.’

He thought about this for a while and said, ‘They used to have bells didn’t they? But holes are much better because they can breathe through those.’

I chose a grave at random and took a photo. I thought no more about it until a few weeks later when I transferred some photos from my mobile phone to my laptop. The headstone was dedicated to a couple with the wonderful name of ‘Hole’. What are the chances?

Last weekend, on a walk through a different graveyard, I noticed a mole hill on one of the graves.

Tom asked, ‘What’s that?’

I replied, ‘They forgot the shouting/breathing holes on that one and the poor person was trying to escape.’

Diagonal Daze in St Mary’s Churchyard, Twyford

8 November 2012
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: burial, cemeteries, memorialisation, Memorialising

Posted by Eleanor Whitby

I was wandering around a churchyard on that one sunny  summer’s day, as you do, and came upon a few really lovely headstones.

The first was surrounded by a burst of colour in a green area of flat memorials in the council owned section – I loved the smooth, pebble like surface and the little indentation which created a bird bath.

I moved round to the church owned section and was taken aback because all the graves were at an angle to the path – obviously positioned to face East, but it created a diagonal vista across the cemetery which I’d never seen before. There must have been a fashion for rough hewn stones as there were several – but I liked this one’s inscription:

” Oh! Call it not death – ‘Tis a holy sleep”

Then I came across the only wooden memorial – cleft from a huge piece of oak. The owner’s name long lost in the ravages of wind and weather – but just look at how  it has dried and stretched and shrunk and cracked, yet still stands tall and proud.

Hiding amongst holly trees,  a prickly barrier against would be intruders to the peace of this long lost grave.This next one then made me stop still for quite a long while – hand hewn by a loving father? husband? brother? So poignant in its home-madeness – I had to touch it and run my fingers over the clumsy lettering that had been chiselled with such love.

As I made my way out, my eye was drawn to this small headstone set back from the path, almost lost by all the cremation plot markers. The angled words completing my diagonal day. What a wonderful inscription, I resolved to make an effort to be more of a light!

The depths they go to

30 October 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: ashes, burial, burial depth, natural burial

In Palmerston, New Zealand, permission to inter ashes in a new natural burial ground has been put on hold. The council wants a period of consultation in order to arrive at a “a better understanding of what sort of natural burial ground people want” in the light of the assertion by a councillor that “cremation is one of the most unsustainable practices you could have.”

Well, well, what a pertinent question! What sort of natural burial ground do people want? What price consensus on that — anywhere? You can tell New Zealand is new to all this. 

In one important respect, the regulations for this NZ NBG are going to be a lot more enlightened than we see at almost every NBG in the UK. They’re going to change the bylaw requiring six-feet-under burial and require, instead, burial at a max of 1 metre, with a covering of 40cms (ie, around 15 inches). This is to ensure rapid, vibrant, aerobic decomposition. 

Way to go, good people. But don’t stop there. 

Yes, you can do even better. Turn your minds also to re-use of graves. What do you say to 30 years?

A burial ground that’s ever-active, 100% financially sustainable — there’s the goal of natural burial. 

Story in the Manawatu Standard here. 

The eloquence of silence

16 October 2012
Charles
14 Comments
Categories: burial, ceremony, funeral customs

Posted by Georgina Pugh

On Friday the autumn sun was just too much – I had to leave my cave like dwelling and head out somewhere you can touch the sky. On the advice of a friend I found myself at the edge of the North York Moors, just past the aptly named ‘surprise view’ at the village of Gillamoor, searching for an old Quaker Burial Ground. In the 1600s non-conformist churches were persecuted and not permitted to bury their dead in consecrated ground so Quakers used private land.

Lowna was used as a cemetery for Quakers between 1675 and 1837 – I guess even after the ban was lifted, the Friends still preferred their lovely corner of peace as the final resting place for their earthly remains.

The burial ground has well and truly returned to nature but remains defined by dry stone walls just high enough to create a space that feels gently enclosed and yet part of the woodlands that surround it. A beck flows nearby. There is an old bench on which you can sit (so long as you are happy to ignore the ‘no entry- falling branches’ health and safety warning sign) and soak up the peace and quietly blessed atmosphere that in my experience always pervades Quaker spaces.

It was quite easy to imagine the Friends all those generations ago, quietly and reverently carrying the bodies of their dead to Lowna and laying them down into the earth – perhaps a prayer if anyone felt moved to speak one, otherwise the rich silence saying all that needed to be said.

I have often mused how afraid we are of silence these days –I used to teach a meditation class at a boarding school in Surrey that was originally established with an hour of silence enshrined in each day. The headmaster described how over the years the ‘Frensham Silence’ had shrunk, being slowly squeezed out by various (I’m sure noble) activities until it was completely absent in the modern school. This seemed an interesting example of how silence has perhaps lost its value in modern society – it’s just not considered productive enough.

I am curious to know of others’ views/experience of weaving silence into modern funerals. I sometimes suggest to a family they might like to have some brief silence as part of a funeral ceremony and sometimes they agree.

Sometimes those silences feel natural and rich and sometimes you can feel people are just not comfortable with it……. Personally I love words and music but I also love quiet and instinctively I feel it has its part to play in a ‘good’ funeral but the whys and hows – I have my thoughts but it would be lovely to hear yours.

Here is the ‘surprise view‘.

Crookback dug up?

13 September 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: burial, memorialisation

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

A skeleton, a skeleton, my kingdom for a skeleton! 

Might we soon discover if Richard III is the hunchbacked tyrant with a withered arm depicted in Shakespeare or if his physical disability was merely Tudor propaganda? 

The king was buried in the church of a Franciscan friary in Leicester after being slain at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. But the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII just over 50 years later has resulted in the exact burial spot being forgotten. 

Now Leicester University archeologists, having examined historical maps, have located the most likely site for the church—a car park of the social services office in the centre of Leicester.

 More here. And more unfolding in the news daily.

Ed’s note: Apologies to Richard the R for the lateness of this. We are way off the pace in all areas just now.

Busybody nonsense

14 August 2012
Charles
14 Comments
Categories: ashes, burial, DIY funeral, funeral directors, Regulation, Rights of the bereaved

Christopher Harris

Some time this evening Christopher Harris will deliver the following speech to Woodstock Town Council, calling upon it to strike out its requirement that the interment of his father’s ashes be superintended by a funeral director.

Here’s another example of someone tenaciously pursuing the rights of the bereaved with an important test case. The ‘bereavement charity with expertise on relevant law’ to which Christopher refers is the AB Welfare and Wildlife Trust, which is administered by the indefatigable John Bradfield, who has done so much to establish the rights of the bereaved. Almost certainly no one alive knows the law around these matters better than John, whose book, ‘Green Burial — The DIY Guide to Law and Practice’, contributed so much to the empowerment of the natural burial movement. 

Chris will attend the meeting dressed as an undertaker in order to make the point that undertakers are self-appointed. 

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Address to Woodstock Town Council
Tuesday 14 August, Woodstock Town Hall – Mayor’s Parlour

Dear Councillors

My father, Richard Harris, died on Wednesday 23 May this year. He resided in Woodstock for almost 40 years. In early  July I approached the Town Council with a view of interring his cremated remains in the local Lawns Cemetery, however I was informed that the Council could not deal directly with me, citing the current Cemetery Rules and Regulations .

Those Rules and Regulations state that ‘all interments and memorials must be arranged by an approved professional firm‘. It is apparently implicit by this statement, according to this Council that,

“A fundamental part of an interment is the actual placing of the remains in the grave or cremation plot and there is therefore an implicit requirement of Woodstock Town Council that the professional firm that is organising the funeral oversee this in order to confirm that the arrangements have been fully complied with.”

This Council is almost unique in its Rules & Regulations on this matter. The only other council which makes the same stipulation is Deddington Parish….

Parishioners have a common law right to use public cemeteries in their own areas. Those experts with whom I have consulted are of the opinion that this legal right cannot be obstructed  by demanding that undertakers be used.

There is no legal requirement to use undertakers for any purpose. The Department of Work & Pensions, clearly states that undertakers do not have to be used in order to qualify for a Funeral Payment. The ‘direct.gov’ website states that undertakers do not have to be used, so why does this town council?

The funeral industry is estimated to be worth £1billion per annum in this country. The industry is unregulated and unlicensed. There are no professional exams, nor accreditation. It begs the question, what is a ‘professional approved firm’ that this Council requires. And who decided the criteria in this Council as to which undertakers are approved? Is it the same people who, in March of this year, are minuted that the newly updated Rules and Regulations and associated documents pertaining to the Cemetery were ‘very comprehensive’? I must agree…they are…very comprehensively flawed. One of those documents is entitled ‘By-laws’, but I am reliably informed, that this Council does not have any by-laws unless they have been approved by a Secretary of State.

This Council is a member of the Institute for Cemetery & Crematorium Management. For many years, that organisation has had its ‘Charter for the Bereaved’, which sets out the highest standards for running public cemeteries. It clearly states that everyone has the right not to use undertakers.

Public cemeteries, have long been run by parish councils with few or no staff. They have never passed management responsibility to undertakers. According to those with whom I have consulted, this Council, (and Deddington’s), are believed to the first to step out of line. Therefore, this issue is of national importance.

So, what is the law? At face value, Article 3 in the Local Authorities Cemeteries Order, might appear to allow this Council to have any rules, which councillors deem desirable. However, rules are only lawful if they result in the “proper management” of the cemetery and do not breach other relevant legal principles, such as those found in the Localism Act 2011, Administration law and human rights.

The primary purpose of administration law, is to prevent all public services, including this Council, from abusing their powers. Such abuses and decisions which go beyond available powers, are unlawful or “ultra vires”.

Decisions must be impartial, fair and reasonable. Arbitrarily imposing the same rule on everyone, along with a refusal to consider individual needs, has in some circumstances, been judged by the courts as unlawful.

Local authority councillors, must avoid anything which might result is suspicion of misconduct, even when suspicions are unfounded. That may be written into the Code of Conduct which this Council has adopted under a new law. The Localism Act (2011), imposes a legal duty to promote and maintain high standards. Though this is not an accusation, some may suspect that there may be collusion between those making and those benefiting from the Rules. The very possibility of such a suspicion, is in itself, a reason to abandon the requirement to use undertakers.

Some in this Council have tried everything within their powers, perceived and actual, to prevent me from speaking this evening, and the conduct of some has, I suggest, not been befitting of someone in their position.

• Selflessness

• Integrity

• Objectivity

• Accountability

• Openness

• Honesty

• Leadership

………are all principles under the Code of Conduct covered by the Localism Act (2011).

Should this Council elect to hold its discussion on Cemetery Rules & Regulations later this meeting,  ‘in Confidential’, it will leave itself open to continuing suggestion of impropriety bringing one or more of the 7 principles into question.

If this Council is minded to review, both its literature and practices, I can provide the name of a bereavement charity with expertise on relevant law, which would be willing to provide free assistance.

 In conclusion, I ask this Council to prove 7 points as documented , based on its current literature:-

(1) that it has the legitimate power to force newly bereaved individuals and families to use undertakers;

(2) that forcing everyone to use undertakers is not unlawful, according to public cemetery law, the Localism Act (2011), Administration law and principles on human rights;

(3)  that it is providing a sensitive “bereavement service” which reflects the same principles as those underpinning our health and welfare services. That means providing choices and opportunities, by being creative, flexible and empowering. It also means using sensitive language;

(4) that parishioners buy plots and are the owners of those plots;

(5) that it is correct to state that parishioners only own memorials and monuments for 25 years;

(6) that it can charge anyone who asks to look at the legally protected burial register; and lastly

 (7) that its “by-laws” really are by-laws, by making available the decision letter of the relevant Secretary of State.

It would be remiss to end my oration without mentioning my dad, a former resident and elector. It is my family’s hope that he’ll be on a corner some time again soon.

If not, for £70 more than what it will cost to have him interred in Woodstock, I can have his ashes blasted into Space on 10 October 2012, boldly going where no Harris has gone before… The price includes a tour of the launch pad, attending a memorial service and a DVD of the ‘event’.

RIP, Dad. Much missed and much-loved. xxx

The GFG is sending a reporter to this event and will report back tomorrow. 

London’s Pyramid of Death

26 July 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: burial, cemeteries, memorialisation

Posted by Belinda Forbes

In the second of BBC Radio 4’s series Unbuilt Britain, Jonathan Glancey describes one of the most audacious buildings ever planned for London – it would have been the largest pyramid ever built.

Church yards were so crowded at the beginning of the 19th century that corpses were literally bursting out of the soil.  Some people believed that a necropolis for the dead might be the answer.  In 1829 the architect Thomas Willson came up with a proposal for the storage of millions of dead bodies in a pyramid situated in Primrose Hill, North London, one of the highest places in London.  Constructed from brick with granite facings, it would have been 94 storeys high and the base would have covered 18 acres.  In his prospectus, Willson claimed that the mausoleum would have made about £10,000,000 – an enormous amount in those days.   He hoped that people would enjoy looking up at this splendid monument as they ate their picnics.

The City of London Archive holds Willson’s drawings and ground plans.  Catharine Arnold, author of ‘Necropolis: London and its Dead’ said that the pyramid was to have been ‘compact, hygienic and ornamental’.

At the time of Willson’s plans, there was a fashion for anything Egyptian so his proposal was not as outlandish as it seems.  Thomas de Quincy, in an opium induced trance, dreamed of meeting Isis and Osiris and ‘being buried…in the heart of eternal pyramids.’ However, public opinion stopped this monumental pyramid of the dead from being built.  It was regarded as too over-bearing.  The idea of a garden cemetery was the preferred option of the General Cemetery Company. If the pyramid had been built, it would have cast a great shadow over the park of Primrose Hill.

Jonathan Glancey’s fascinating programme is available on BBC iPlayer here.

Grave dressing at Easter

4 April 2012
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, burial, cemeteries, Funeral flowers

Posted by Vale

On my way to the crematorium today I passed a family tidying a grave, clearing it after the winter and bringing fresh flowers for Easter.

It reminded me of this description from the diary of Francis Kilvert. At the time of writing he was a curate at Clyro on the Welsh border near to Hay on Wye.

Saturday Easter Eve 16 April 1870

…When I started for Cefn y Blaen only two or three people were in the churchyard with flowers. But now the customary beautiful Easter Eve Idyll had fairly begun and people kept arriving from all parts with flowers to dress the graves. Children were coming from the town and from the neighbouring villages with baskets of flowers and knives to cut holes in the turf. The roads were lively with people coming and going and the churchyard a busy scene with women and a few men moving about among the tombstones and kneeling down beside the green mounds flowering the graves. An evil woman from Hay was dressing a grave…

More and more people kept coming into the churchyard as they finished their day’s work. The sun went down in glory beside the dingle, but still the work of love went on through the twilight and into the dusk until the moon rose full and splendid. The figures continued to move about among the graves and to bend over the green mounds in the calm clear moonlight and warm air of the balmy evening…

When the choir had gone and the lights were out and the church quiet again, as I walked down the Churchyard alone the decked graves had a strange effect in the moonlight and looked as if the people had laid down to sleep for the night out of doors, ready dressed to rise early on Easter morning.

On this blog we’ve sometimes discussed the need for special days – like the Mexican Day of the Dead – where we spend time with the ancestors. Rightly, the general view is that you couldn’t import such an alien custom but this beautiful celebration is native to us and the scenes described were only a little over a hundred years ago. And some families still take time at Easter to dress ’their’ graves.

Are there places out there where this is still a more general tradition and ritual?

They fit into a spread hand, yet reach into eternity

5 March 2012
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, burial, funeral directors, funeral reformers, natural burial, open-air cremation

Posted by Rupert Callender, owner of The Green Funeral Company.

As human beings, we look for meaning everywhere, superimposing it over everything that comes into our lives. The Australian aborigines believe that the world was vocalised into existence, literally sung into creation, and that the song needs to be continued so that reality can flourish. We are no different, giving identities to our household objects, cursing our computer when it misbehaves or urging our spluttering car toward home. We see patterns where, without us, there are none. A world that responds to our awakening gaze, and freezes again as we look away.

As undertakers, we work in an area where meanings blur and identities become less certain. For us, a body is just that: a body. Something awkward and heavy to be treated practically between us, to be lifted and moved, dressed or washed. But when they are in the presence of those who loved them, they become people again, suffused with personality and history, mute vessels for love and longing, themselves but changed. It is to witness this change that we gently lead the living toward, no more certain as to what it means than they, only sure that it is as important as it is painful.

The picture above is of one of our lowering straps, part of our meagre collection of professional equipment. We have two of them, simple strips of furniture webbing to reinforce chairs that we bought thirteen years ago in a haberdashery shop in Cornwall. You can see the colouration of the soil on them, their history stained into the edge. The red thread marks the midpoint. It rests over the centre of the grave, a guide for when we stretch them over before the coffin is laid on top.

They are just material, yet for me they are one of the most powerfully resonant things I possess. They have lowered old men and children, people whose deaths were a longed for mercy and those ripped from their families. They have held mothers leaving shellshocked children, people who have had terrible things done to them, and those who have done terrible things. They have slipped through mine and Claire’s hands a thousand times, and the hand’s of grandmothers and fathers, lovers and friends. They are tinged with our blood cut by the edges of coffins, stained with soil and mud and grass and sweat, and of course, with tears. The tears of people doing the bravest, hardest, saddest thing of their lives, gently lowering their beloved down into a grave.

They fit into a spread hand, yet reach into eternity. Not just bits of woven cloth, but portals, ladders to another world, or at least to the end of this one. At times they appear like mandalas, or spiraling universes. They seem to possess a patient wisdom, to have personality. We certainly have shared history.

I wonder what part they will play in my own end, whether their frayed edges will still be strong enough by then. In my secret heart, I know they will, that they are an umbilical cord reaching out into the womb of my own death, ravelling me nearer.

Hopefully, when my time has come I will be burnt on a hill. If I am, them perhaps one should be wrapped around me, the other to journey with Claire to who knows where. 

These decisions are not ours to make, and maybe they will slip through the hands of my family as they lower me down into the ground. Where ever I am going, I have confidence that the straps will see me safely to the end. They always have.