THE Consistory Court of the diocese of Norwich has granted a petition for a faculty to exhume the remains of a stillborn baby buried in the churchyard of Ormesby St Margaret, more than ten years ago. The baby had been buried in a small blue casket in the grave of his paternal grandfather.

Since then, the baby’s parents had separated after what they both described as a relationship that was “abusive” and “toxic”. The mother applied for the faculty to exhume and either cremate or rebury the baby’s remains in the churchyard of Ormesby St Michael.

The ground on which she applied for the faculty was that she suffered medical harm by way of distress and psychological harm when visiting the grave, including nightmares and flashbacks. The court accepted that there was a clear link between the reliable medical evidence provided about the mother’s condition, and the location of the grave, and that that provided grounds for making an exception to the rule as to the permanence of Christian burial.

The baby’s father consented to the mother’s petition, subject to his knowing where the baby was to be reburied. The mother was unhappy that the father would know where the baby was to be reburied, but the Chancellor, the Worshipful Jacqueline Humphreys, said that not only did the father “have a right to know where his child was buried, the record of burials in a churchyard [was] public information” and was “not information that can be kept secret from anyone”.

The mother asked that the baby’s remains, once exhumed, be cremated, and a service of remembrance be held. She did not indicate what she would plan to do with the cremated remains thereafter, and the implication was that they would not be reburied anywhere, but rather would be retained by the mother. In the alternative the petition asked for reburial at St Michael’s churchyard.

The Chancellor said that the law did not permit the baby’s remains, which had been “buried in consecrated ground over ten years ago to now be cremated and then left unburied”. Burial of human remains in consecrated ground carried an intention of permanence, and exhumation was the exception.

Generally, reburial of those remains in other consecrated ground was required so that permanence was also intended in the new location. Only rarely was exhumation permitted for reburial in unconsecrated ground, but reburial somewhere was almost always required. There was nothing in the circumstances of this case, the Chancellor said, to suggest that reburial was not appropriate.

The mother’s petition was granted, and it was required that the baby’s remains be reburied at St Michael’s, at the direction of the minister of that church. It was a condition of that, that the named undertakers should exhume the remains of the baby and retain them in their possession at all times until they were reverently and discreetly reburied in the churchyard at St Michael’s as soon as practicable.

Any application for a memorial to the baby to be erected over his grave must either be compliant with the relevant churchyard regulations, and have the consent of both his parents, or they must be subject to a faculty application to the Consistory Court.

Due to the sensitive nature of the case the names of the parties were anonymised.