HAMPSHIRE-LIFE-L Archives

From: "Chris & Caroline" <>
Subject: want a secondhand grave, headstone etc?
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:48:28 +0100

Telegraph.co.uk
For sale: old, second-hand graves. £3,000 each, many careful owners
By Stephanie Condron


A cemetery is offering second-hand graves, with "refurbished" monuments
including headstones, obelisks and crosses, to be used again.
Recycled burial plots, complete with the original memorials, still contain
the remains of those who died at least 75 years ago - the names of the dead
are simply scoured from the monuments to allow new inscriptions.
The City of London cemetery is selling 1,000 such plots advertised as
"traditional-style graves" to be "adopted" by families willing to pay £3,000
to lease them for 50 years.
The 200-acre cemetery, built in 1853 by the Victorians in Manor Park, east
London, is one of the largest in Europe. But, like cemeteries across the
country, it is running out of burial space.
Manor Park is understood to be the first to consider selling memorials with
old graves as part of the solution.
The City of London corporation says many graves were dug deep enough to
allow for more coffins and re-using the memorials is good conservation.
Ian Hussein, the cemetery manager, said: "The issue of shortage of burial
space has been around for a long time.
"The only viable way forward is to reuse the graves. We are reusing the
monuments too. Many had only one or two in them so there's room on top for
more.
"We did not expect it to be that popular because it's a complete change of
our culture. But we were surprised by the uptake.
"A common response is to think, 'Ooh, that's a bit disrespectful'. But I
tell people it's better to use old English stone that's been quarried
already than to use stone that's imported from all parts of the world and
does not really fit."
It is illegal to disturb human remains but Parliament is considering
allowing authorities in London to rebury old bones in abandoned Victorian
graves deep enough to allow for more coffins - if there are no surviving
relatives who object.
The scheme, assisted by English Heritage and the Institute of Cemetery and
Crematorium Management, has been running for 10 months and nine families
have signed up for plots.
"When someone purchases a grave they adopt that original memorial," said Tim
Morris, the institute's chief executive. "New inscriptions can be put on and
everything is kept in character to the original. Some of these elaborate
Victorian memorials could probably not be bought nowadays.
"Cynics say, 'They are selling people's memorials' but that is not the case.
It would be immoral to just sell them but that's not being done. They are
being adopted."
Burials account for 28 per cent of funerals and cemeteries short of land are
finding new ways of creating plots.
They include covering abandoned graves with new soil and building overground
catacombs.
Annie Kiff-Wood, of the charity Cruse Bereavement Care, said: "It will seem
very strange and disrespectful to a lot of people, but while so many of us
want to be buried these issues have to be faced. "This is something we in
modern society are going to have to get our
http://tinyurl.com/env4y
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OR HOW ABOUT GETTING BURIED STANDING UP?

Old graves may be used for double and 'vertical' burials
By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent

Old graves may soon be opened to allow more bodies to be buried in the same
plot, the Government indicated yesterday.
Harriet Harman, the minister responsible for cemeteries, said the desperate
shortage of space in graveyards could no longer be ignored and said she was
prepared to tackle "political taboos" such as double burials.

Harriet Harman: 'It is the big political taboo, isn't it?'
A consultation this year found that most people would accept "double-deck"
graves, particularly in London, where the problem of overcrowded graveyards
is acute.
"We have to make some decisions that have been put off and put off," Miss
Harman said in a newspaper interview.
"They have been put off because people do not want to make the decision
about whether you do what is described as lift and deepen. This is where you
use space - I am phrasing this delicately - in a vertical as well as a
horizontal way.
"It is the big political taboo, isn't it? And it has become quite complex
with all the different cultural approaches to death."
The practice would probably involve reopening untended graves more than 100
years old and transferring the remains to a smaller container, which would
be buried deeper in the same plot. Another coffin could then be lowered into
the original space. The practice, which would require primary legislation by
Parliament, was examined in a report issued two years ago, called Planning
for Burial Space in London. It recommended that only graves more than 100
years old should be disturbed, because that was the maximum lease that could
be bought on a burial spot, but that there should be no limit to the number
of times a grave could be reused.
The report said that descendants should be able to object to remains being
exhumed, although there would be little left of the body after a century in
the ground.
The Church of England said yesterday that it had no theological objections
as long as the process was carried out sensitively and after consulting any
surviving relatives. That view was echoed by the Roman Catholic Church.
A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said that such burials would
not conflict with Islam.
Recent research showed that cemeteries in three inner-London boroughs were
full and 16 other areas in the capital would be at capacity within five to
15 years. That is despite the fact that 70 per cent of people are cremated.
Miss Harman said the Government was consulting councils, Churches and
communities to find "a sensible solution". Her office said a decision would
be taken by the end of the year.
Tim Morris, the chief executive of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium
Management, said the reusing of graves was "desperately needed".
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