A WORKING party set up by the Ecclesiastical Judges Association has presented its report on churchyard memorial regulations. The working party consisted of six past and present consistory-court judges with His Honour Peter Collier KC as chair.
The current diocesan churchyard-memorial regulations have been in existence for more than 50 years. They came into being because each bishop had the ultimate responsibility for the churches and churchyards in their diocese. The bishop’s responsibility was to see that what was there and what was done there were consistent with the faith that the Church proclaimed.
The way in which that responsibility was exercised had developed over the centuries, and much of the practical aspect had been delegated to diocesan chancellors, who, through the faculty jurisdiction of their consistory courts, gave permission for any changes in the church or churchyard. Diocesan chancellors saw a need to update the regulations.
There were several reasons for that. There had been changes in the availability of some types of stone, and there were some issues about whether importation of stone was appropriate, even though imported stone was considerably cheaper. There had also been a significant change in cultural expectations about epitaphs.
Two particular discussions among chancellors led to the sense that there was a need positively to progress ideas about revision. The first was a discussion about memorials for children. There had often been requests to allow memorials in different sizes and shapes with different inscriptions from the kind permitted by the regulations. The question then arose whether special provision could and should be made for memorials to children and young people.
The second was the case In re Exhall, St Giles [2021] EACC 1. That was a case about a request for an inscription on a memorial in Irish Gaelic of words meaning “in our hearts for ever”. The consistory court refused to permit the Irish words unless they were accompanied by an English translation. In February 2021, the Court of Arches allowed an appeal and permitted the Irish words on the memorial without a translation, but the translation had to be entered on the parish record.
Although, from time to time, what was not allowed to be said on a memorial had attracted newspaper headlines, that was the first time in recent years that an appellate court had considered a question about headstones. The Bishop of Coventry appointed Canon Mark Bratton, a barrister, to conduct a review of the case and its circumstances. That review formed a large section of the report of the working party.
The working party stated that the intention was not to produce a uniform set of regulations, since there were often good reasons for different regulations in different parts of the country, such as type and colour of local native stone. There was also an awareness, however, that significant differences between adjacent dioceses could be confusing for those involved in the industry and working across diocesan boundaries. And it could be even more confusing for families of the deceased who would have little idea that there were such things as regulations at all, let alone why they differed from place to place.
The working party considered “non-standard cases”, in which chancellors had, over the years, had to deal with petitions to introduce memorials that did not comply with the specified standards. The reported cases covered a variety of issues on which there seemed “to be no end to the ingenuity and variety of what some bereaved families request”.
The working party said that the underlying principle was “not that if it is not permitted in the regulations you cannot have it, but whether there is a good case made out for permitting what is requested to be introduced into the particular churchyard”. It was often stated that the grave space did not belong to the family, that what was erected by way of a memorial needed not only to respect and reflect the ambience of the churchyard as it was, but also to be appropriate as a memorial to the deceased. It was also likely to be in place for many years and would outlive the family members who had erected it in memory of their much loved relative.
The report said, however, that there was a significant number of petitions which had as a common theme that what the family wanted was not permitted by the regulations but there were already several like memorials in the churchyard. The most common such request related to black polished granite memorials with gilded lettering, which most regulations did not permit except by faculty.
The problem was often exacerbated because former incumbents had allowed, without faculty, memorials that had not fully complied with the regulations. It then became quite difficult when a new incumbent, usually supported by the PCC, wished to comply with the regulations. Those cases could become locally high-profile and controversial when the bereaved family looked to the local media for support. Those cases were “always seen as good copy by journalists”.
The working party referred to one of the earliest cases dealing with that issue, In re St Giles’s Churchyard Farnborough, in March 1983. The petition was for a headstone in blue pearl granite. The regulations did not allow monuments with “mirror polished” surfaces nor those “polished beyond a good smooth surface”. The chancellor granted the petition and observed that “there are churchyards where it would sometimes be unwise to apply the . . . regulations too rigidly in view of what has gone before.” He reminded PCCs of his power to authorise particular incumbents to act on wider guidelines than those contained in the regulations.
Another case referred to was In re St Helen, Selston, in July 1995, about a petition for a polished heart-shaped stone in memory of a 17-year-old girl. The chancellor refused the petition and observed that, if it were allowed, “the parish would have no hope of legally holding the line in future.”
The working party proposed that each chancellor should commence a review of their own diocesan regulations immediately. The chancellor should not only engage with their diocesan advisory committee and archdeacons, but also with local funeral directors and memorial masons and discuss with those who knew the diocese well the extent to which they needed to consult more widely in the local community so as to be aware of relevant diversity issues. Although there were significant differences between the regulations in different dioceses, they all embodied an underlying approach to what was considered generally appropriate in a churchyard.
The working party did, however, recognise that that approach — articulated, for example, in the Churchyards Handbook (2012) — did not command universal support, and, in particular, that potentially it could conflict with the different expectations embodied in the culture of particular communities. Historically, travelling communities had been one such group in some dioceses, although sometimes isolated to just one or two particular parishes. The purpose of the consultation would be to enable the diocese and all communities to work together to find a way forward in relation to memorialisation within the diocesan regulations, which would be kept under review as times and communities changed.
The report recommends that each diocese produce an additional-matters order (AMO), to follow the template provided in the report, to state what memorials may be allowed without the need of a faculty in that diocese. Almost half of the report contains detailed recommendations for the content of these AMOs, including the shape, size, and materials for memorials, the identification of the “incumbent” who may consent to the burial of someone who has no right to burial in the churchyard or parish burial ground, and even the use of metric measurements for memorials.