IF A faculty for exhumation were sought solely for remains to be reburied deeper in the same grave, that represented the efficient use of burial space, and was to be encouraged, and the normal presumption against exhumation save in exceptional circumstances did not apply, Chancellor Philip Petchey said in the Consistory Court of the diocese of Southwark.
The petitioner, Allan James Jenkins, sought a faculty to exhume the remains of his mother, Marjorie Helena Jenkins, who died in January 2010. She was buried in the consecrated part of West Norwood Cemetery, in a grave where there had been three previous burials, in 1939, 1949, and 1959, of Mrs Jenkins’s parents and her aunt.
Cemetery records showed that the first burial was at a depth of 11 feet, the second at a depth of ten feet, and the third at a depth of nine feet. Cemetery records also showed that where an initial burial had been at 11 feet, it had been possible to accommodate five burials in a grave. The fourth and fifth burials would be at depths of eight feet and seven feet.
The practice at West Norwood Cemetery, however, which had initially been a private cemetery but had now been acquired by the London Borough of Lambeth, was for the fourth burial to be at a depth of five feet. In accordance with that practice, Mrs Jenkins’s grave was dug to a depth of five feet.
Consequently, a fifth burial would be possible only if a bricked chamber were constructed on top of the existing interments, although that would preclude the interment of any cremated remains within the grave. When his time came, Mr Jenkins wished his remains to be buried in the grave of his mother, his grandparents, and his great-aunt. His wife wished her cremated remains to be interred within the same grave.
Mr Jenkins raised the question of the depth of the burial with the cemetery authorities at his mother’s graveside, before her burial, but by then it was too late to do anything. He sought a faculty for the exhumation of his mother’s remains, and for them to be reburied within the same grave at a greater depth. That would enable further burials there without the need for a bricked chamber, and would also enable ashes to be interred there.
In 2002, in a case concerning Blagdon Cemetery, the Court of Arches stressed that permanence was the norm of Christian burial, and that permission for exhumation should be granted only exception-ally. The Chancellor said that rather different considerations applied to a proposal which was for exhumation and reinterment in the same grave.
In recent years, there had been concern about the shortage of burial space, and it had been suggested that additional space could be made available by a practice known as “lift and deepen”: lifting the remains in a grave, and reburying them at a greater depth in order to provide additional space.
In July 2004, in response to a government consultation, the Cathedrals and Church Buildings Division of the Archbishops’ Council made it clear that it welcomed the practice of “lift and deepen” in respect of graves in consecrated ground, and did not suggest that the general objection to exhumation applied to it.
The Chancellor said that that represented the correct approach. Historically, churchyards were used over and over again, and to facilitate that it must have been necessary, from time to time, to lift and deepen. If remains were not moved, except to be placed deeper in the ground, that was not exhumation to which the presumption articulated in the Blagdon Cemetery case applied.
Nevertheless, the Chancellor said that respect for the dead suggested that human remains be disturbed as little as possible. A faculty was granted for the exhumation and reburial of Mrs Jenkins’s remains at a depth sufficient to permit further burial in due course.
As part of the faculty, conditional permission was also given to “deepen and lower” the other remains interred in the grave, if that was necessary to achieve the required depth. There was to be the minimum disturbance to those remains consistent with the object of achieving sufficient depth.