Exhumations

The Chancellor refused to grant a faculty to authorise the temporary removal from the vault beneath the Sheldon Chapel of a skull, possibly that of William Shakespeare, to enable the carrying out of a detailed archaeological investigation to include laser scanning, radio carbon dating, and an anthropological assessment. The Chancellor found no scholarly or other evidence to support the story that the skull was that of William Shakespeare.

The petitioner wished to have the cremated remains of her father, who died in 2000, exhumed from Orford churchyard and reinterred? in the grave of her mother, whose ashes had been interred in Warrington Cemetery about 18 months before the death of the petitioner's father. The petitioner's mother had been a Roman Catholic and her father had been an Anglican. The petitioner claimed that, at the time of her father's death, the family mistakenly thought he had to be buried in an Anglican grave. She also stated that the family now wished to have the couple united in a family grave. The Chancellor decided that there were no exceptional circumstances to justify the grant of a faculty: the issue as to where the petitioner's father could be buried could have been decided shortly after his death; a long period had elapsed since the interment; and there was no support for the exhumation from the parish.

The petitioner wished to exhume the cremated remains of her father and reinter them in the grave of her mother in the same churchyard. The Chancellor decided that neither a desire to have both parents' remains together, nor the state of the location where the father's remains were interred, were enough to amount to special circumstances to justify the grant of a faculty for exhumation. Nor was there any element of mistake as to the places of interment. He therefore refused to grant a faculty.

This is an anonymised judgment. In 2014, Baby A was buried in the grave of his paternal grandfather in the churchyard of St. Margaret Ormesby. His parents, his mother B and father C, had subsequently separated after a difficult relationship. Medical evidence was produced to explain that B, when visiting the grave, had been suffering psychological harm and distress including nightmares and flashbacks to extremely distressing incidents. Another reason for the application, made jointly by B and C, was that C’s mother had recently died, and C and his brother wished to bury their mother’s remains in the grave containing the remains of their father and Baby A. B wished A’s remains to be cremated or alternatively reburied in the churchyard of St. Michael Ormesby. The Chancellor granted a faculty, but subject to reburial in the churchyard of St. Michael Ormesby.

The petitioner's father was a Latvian. After release from a German prisoner of war camp, he had not been allowed to return to Latvia (then occupied by Russia), and so he had settled in England. He died in 1995 and his cremated remains were interred in the Lower Stratton Cemetery (owned by the Parish Council) next to St. Margaret's Church. The petitioner's mother died in 2022, and part of her cremated remains had been buried in the same plot as her husband's. The petitioner wished to exhume the ashes of her father, so that part of his ashes could be interred with the retained portion of her mother's ashes in Latvia. The Chancellor refused to grant a faculty: there was no evidence of the father's desire to have his remains interred in Latvia, or any evidence that he wished his remains to be buried with his wife's remains; there was no discussion at the time of his funeral about the possibility of moving his remains in the future; no enquiries had been made about the possibility of exhumation in the 27 years since he had died; there was no intention to create a family grave, but two separate graves; and no effort had been made to identify graves in Latvia.

The petitioners wished to exhume the cremated remains of their father and reinter them in a nearby cemetery. Their father had died in 1977, since when the church, church, church hall and vicarage had been demolished and the cremated remains had been moved to a new Garden of Rest, which the petitioners had been unhappy with, in view of the difficult conditions that visitors had to contend with there. The Chancellor was satisfied that there were exceptional circumstances in justifying the grant of a faculty, as an exception to the normal rule that burial should be permanent: "... the fact that the deceased's ashes were moved at the time of the demolition of the church and the associated work in relation to the Garden of Rest, whereby it can be said that his "final resting place" then lost a degree of permanence, which only the grant of this faculty can restore."

The petitioner's father had lived in Worcestershire for a short time before his death in 1989. The petitioner's late brother, a priest, had decided as a temporary measure to have his father's ashes interred at Fairfield, with a view to the ashes being reinterred in Great Amwell in Hertfordshire with the ashes of his mother after her death, which in fact occurred in 2011. The ashes of both parents were to be interred in a family grave at Great Amwell. Most of the family lived in or near Great Amwell, and the petitioner's father had lived in a cottage next to the churchyard. The Deputy Chancellor decided that there were exceptional circumstances to justify the exhumation and reinterment in the family grave.

The petitioner sought a faculty to authorise the exhumation of the cremated remains of his father from the churchyard and reinterment in the cremated remains section of a nearby cemetery. The reason given was that the deceased's wife had died recently and she had wanted her cremated remains to be interred in the cemetery. The petitioner wished to unite the cremated remains of his father with the cremated remains of his mother in the same grave. In the light of the guidance in Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, the Deputy Chancellor determined that there were no exceptional reasons to justify the grant of a faculty for the exhumation of the deceased’s remains.

The petitioners' father died in 1993. His body was cremated and his ashes were interred in the churchyard. The petitioners' mother died in 2021. The petitioners wished to fulfil their mother's request before her death that, regretting that she had had her husband's ashes interred in the churchyard, she wished her husband's ashes to be exhumed following her death and scattered with her own ashes in a favourite place. The Chancellor refused to grant a faculty. There were no sufficiently exceptional circumstances to justify an exhumation, particularly after such a long lapse of time between the two deaths.

In 1980, the petitioner's late father's ashes were interred in a cemetery in Loughborough. In 1985, the ashes were exhumed and reinterred in the churchyard at East Leake. The petitioner now wished to have his father's ashes re-exhumed and reinterred in another part of the churchyard, with the ashes of the petitioner's mother, who had recently died. The Chancellor determined that there were exceptional factors to justify the grant of a faculty for exhumation. The canopy of a cypress tree had grown over the grave, leaving only one metre clearance above the grave; the area around the grave was overgrown; and the grave was likely to be affected by the tree's roots.