Britain | Cemeteries

Tombstone blues

In just one way, London is less overcrowded than the countryside

A grave overcrowding problem

IN MARKET WEIGHTON, a pretty town in East Yorkshire, the main topic of idle chat this summer has not been the weather or sport, but where the town’s inhabitants will spend eternity. The only cemetery has but a handful of empty burial spaces. “If you’re born and bred in Market Weighton you like to think you’d end up buried here next to your family,” complains Winston Hagston, proprietor of Hagston’s Butchers on the red-brick high street. That seems less and less likely.

In much of Britain, cemeteries are running out of space. Though there are few reliable statistics, most will have reached capacity within 30 years, reckons Tim Morris, chief executive of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management (ICCM). The population is growing; the proportion choosing cremation, which rose sharply in the late 20th century, has levelled off.

In continental Europe graves are often reused by burying old remains deeper in the ground and placing a new coffin above them. That is banned in most of Britain by a Victorian law that also allowed internment outside overcrowded churchyards, where reuse of graves was common. The law also made graves in cemeteries permanent, partly to deter grave robbing.

The ICCM has long lobbied for a change in the law. In the meantime the squeeze becomes ever more uncomfortable. More people are having to travel longer distances to visit relatives’ graves—and paying more: local authorities often charge non-residents higher fees. Julie Rugg, a burial expert at York University, says cemeteries are being spoiled as pathways and trees are dug up to create more space. Nearby, long-forgotten gravestones crumble.

Growing demand for land from farmers and builders makes matters worse. In Market Weighton, the cemetery sits next to an empty field. But the local authority has earmarked this for houses. Marian Frith, the mayor, hopes to come to an agreement with another landowner—“but, of course, land is so valuable.”

The law may eventually be changed. Funeral directors in London, where reuse of graves has been legal since 2007, say people do not sniff at grave recycling as long as the original inhabitants died a long time ago. Still, the law is hedged about with provisos. Only graves that were formerly privately-owned—less than half of those in cemeteries—that have been undisturbed for 75 years and have been reclaimed by the local authority may be reused. Cemeteries are confused about what to do with old gravestones.

Yet John Cribb, who runs a funeral business in the borough of Newham that was started by his great-grandfather in 1881, says the problem is easing. Muslims, who now account for one-third of Newham’s population, run their own cemeteries outside the borough, he says; the traditional East End funeral, with horse-drawn carriages and black top hats, is in decline. Immigration has changed his business in other ways too. The families of migrants who die in Britain choose to bring them home if they can afford it. “Our big business is repatriation now,” he says.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Tombstone blues"

Hit him hard

From the August 31st 2013 edition

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