Exhumations

The petitioner wished to have the cremated remains of her daughter, who had died in in a tragic accident in 1998, exhumed from a grave in Parkside Road Cemetery in Kendal and reinteered with the remains of the petitioner's recently deceased father in another grave in the same cemetery. For a number of reasons, including the fact that the father's remains could be interred in the same grave as the daughter, the Chancellor declined to grant the faculty sought, because he did not accept that any exception was warranted by the facts of this case to the presumption of the permanence of Christian burial.

The petitioner wished to exhume the remains of her baby daughter (who died in 1948) and of her husband (who died in 1989) from Bingham Cemetery, a few miles from her home in the nearby village of Gamston. At the time of the interments, Bingham was the place where people from Gamston were normally interred. The petitioner and her daughter and son-in-law had purchased two plots in Wilford Hill Cemetery, about one mile away from Gamston.  The intention was that the petitioner’s daughter and son-in-law should in due course be buried in one of the plots at Wilford Hill and that the petitioner’s husband’s and infant daughter’s remains should be transferred to the other grave, in which the petitioner would eventually be buried. The Chancellor considered that there were no exceptional circumstances to justify the exhumations, and he accordingly refused to grant a faculty. This was not a case of a desire for remains to be moved to a family grave, but to exhume from a family grave, in which it was possible for the petitioner’s remains to be interred in due course.

The petitioner wished to have her husband’s cremated remains exhumed from a consecrated part of Bingham Cemetery and reinterred in the churchyard at Stoke Bardolph (some 8 miles away). The initial reason given was that the petitioner found it difficult to visit and tend the grave. The incumbent of Stoke Bardolph did not support the proposal. The Chancellor pointed out that moving cremated remains to another grave, simply to make it easier to tend the grave, was not a sufficiently exceptional reason to authorise exhumation and reinterment. (See Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299.) However, the petitioner wished her husband’s remains to be reinterred in a family grave at Stoke Bardolph, where the petitioner also wished to have her own remains interred in due time. The Chancellor observed that reinterment in family graves (and consequently freeing up an original grave for later use) had come to be regarded as an exception to the general rule against exhumation. He therefore granted a faculty, subject to either the deceased having a legal right to burial in Stoke Bardolph (having died in the parish or having been on the electoral roll) or, if not, subject to the incumbent reviewing her earlier decision and allowing the reinterment.

The petitioner wished to have her husband's body exhumed from the cemetery in Sunderland, in order to have the body cremated and the ashes then taken to a parish in Northamptonshire to which the petitioner proposed to move. The Chancellor, applying the guidelines set out by the Court of Arches decision in Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, considered that there was insufficient reason to justify the grant of a faculty for exhumation.

This was an appeal from a decision of the Chancellor of the Diocese of Bath & Wells, who refused to grant a faculty for the exhumation of the remains of Steven Whittle from Blagdon Cemetery, Somerset, with a view to their re-interment in Stowmarket Cemetery, Suffolk. The deceased's parents had difficulty in travelling from Suffolk to Somerset to visit their son's grave, and wished for his remains to be moved near to their permanent home and placed in a family grave. The judgment discusses the theology of burial and sets out various factors which should be considered before a decision is made as to whether an exception should be allowed from the general presumption of permanence arising from the initial act of interment in consecrated ground. The Court directed that a faculty should be granted by the Consistory Court. The Court made its decision on a number of grounds, one being that the remains were to be reinterred in a family grave in Stowmarket.

The body of a member of the petitioner's family had been interred in the cemetery in 1969, and the intention had been that the coffin would be buried sufficiently deep that three family coffins could be accommodated in the grave. When a second body was interred in 2022, it was discovered that there would not be sufficient room for a third interment. The petitioner therefore sought a faculty to allow the temporary exhumation of the two coffins in the grave, so that the grave could be dug deeper and the two coffins reinterred, thus enabling a third interment in the grave in due course. The Chancellor was satisfied that a mistake had been made in 1969, therefore the case was sufficiently exceptional to warrant the grant of a faculty as requested.

A man had died in 2023 and, the whereabouts of any relatives being unknown at the time, those who took on responsibility for his burial arranged for him to be buried in a consecrated part of the Bognor Regis Town Cemetery. When the man's family became aware of the burial, they applied for a faculty to allow them to exhume the deceased's body, to have it cremated and then to scatter the ashes elsewhere. The reason given by the family for their application was that the deceased had been a lifelong atheist and would not have wished to be buried in a Christian burial ground. The Chancellor decided that the Christian burial had been a mistake and he therefore granted a faculty for exhumation and disposal of the deceased's ashes in due course as the family thought fit.

The son of the petitioner, who was of the Sikh faith, was stillborn 40 years ago. Owing to the petitioner's atate of health and shock at the time, the funeral arrangements were left to other members of the family, and the body of the stillborn was buried in a coffin in a consecrated part of the cemetery by a Sikh priest, because there was no area in the cemetery set aside for burials of those of the Sikh faith. Had the petitioner known at the time that Cremation was an option, she would have had her stillborn son cremated and his ashes taken to India for scattering on an Indian river in accordance with the Sikh her faith. The Chancellor acepted that the petitioner had been haunted all her life by the lack of choice she had had in the way that her stillborn son's funeral was dealt with and her own wishes had not been fulfullied, so that, as she faced her own mortality, she was now troubled by a desire to have her son's death commemorated in the way she would have wished, in order to give her peace in her remaining years. The Chancellor decided that ther were exceptional circumstances to justify granting a faculty, subject to the conditions listed in the judgment.

The petitioners wished to have the cremated remains of their father exhumed from Bourne Abbey and reinterred in a cemetery in Harlow, where their mother's cremated remains had been interred following her recent death. Upon consideration of the guidelines laid down in the Court of Arches decision in Re Blagdon Cemetery 2002 Fam 299, the Chancellor determined that this was a case where an exception could be made to the presumption that burial should be treated as final, as the remains of the petitioners' father would be reinterred in a family grave.

A faculty was granted for exhumation of a body from one part of a cemetery, where it had been interred contrary to the wishes of the deceased's wife, and reinterment near other family graves in the same cemetery. The Chancellor found that there had been "an error in administration", which justified him in granting a faculty.