WOODLAND burials offer the Church of England one way of
addressing its "scant attention to the natural world", the
Priest-in-Charge of Glynde with Firle and Beddingham, the Revd
Peter Owen-Jones, has said.
Mr Owen-Jones, who initiated the first Church of England
woodland burial site, Barton Glebe, near Cambridge (News, 30
September 2005), was at the opening last Friday of Britain's
newest such site, the Durham City Woodland Burial Project.
Earlier in the week, he said that woodland burial was a sign
that "the new environmental consciousness . . . is beginning now to
come of age. I think it has been regrettable that the Christian
community in this country seems to be lagging far behind what a
large section of the rest of the population are beginning to
understand."
The Durham project is believed to be the first in the country to
be managed by a non-profit company - the Woodland Burial Trust
Community Interest Company - and is run in co-operation with Durham
County Council.
Its opening coincides with the launch of a new book, Natural
Burial: Traditional-secular spiritualities and funeral
innovation, by the director of the Centre for Death and Life
Studies, at Durham University, Professor Douglas Davies, and Dr
Hannah Rumble, a research associate.
Their research suggests that Britain is "leading the world
globally in natural - or woodland - burials where people are
typically buried in a woodland setting, field, or meadow in wicker,
cardboard, or other ecologically appropriate coffins", Professor
Davies said.