A MEMORIAL headstone over a grave should either include the Christian names of all the kids and grandchildren of the deceased, or none of them, a Chancellor has ruled. To include only a collection of the names of the bereaved family was not permitted.
The Consistory Court of the diocese of Sheffield imposed that condition when granting a personal petition for a college permitting the installation of a headstone within the churchyard of St Mary’s, Catcliffe, commemorating the petitioner’s paternal grandfather and grandmother, who had died in May 2021 and October 2022 respectively, and had been interred in the identical plot.
Memorials and the wording on them shouldn’t be used as an arena for ongoing family disputes, the court ruled.
The Chancellor, the Worshipful Judge Sarah Singleton KC, said that churchyards and the memorials installed in them needs to be places for the bereaved to “visit and remember those whom they’d lost on the place where their stays had been interred”, and “must also be an oasis of peace, suitable for time spent in quiet reflection and contemplation for all visitors whether bereaved or not”.
The petition to the Consistory Court was brought after the incumbent had refused permission since the proposed memorial didn’t comply with the diocesan churchyard rules, in that it was shaped as a book of polished black granite. The proposal also included a colored poppy design and was crowded with engraved sentiments.
The names and dates of death were set out on the pages of the book. The memorial included on its base slab, at either side, flower vases, which were to incorporate more sentiments on all sides with the Christian names of two members of the family on the left side, and the Christian names of the petitioner and her father on the proper side.
When public notice of the petition was displayed at the positioning of the grave, three members of the family, a daughter and two other grandchildren of the deceased couple, objected due to the naming of some, but not all, of the deceased’s children and grandchildren.
One objector said that the headstone, which was “to mark the resting place of two very special people in our lives . . . shouldn’t be some extent of contention between families”.
In addition to the petition itself, the petitioner had written detailed letters to the Registry about events and family dynamics particularly throughout the last years of the lives of the deceased. She also relied on the incontrovertible fact that she and the opposite named relatives were paying for the memorial with none contribution from the objectors.
The Chancellor said that “it might be an entirely destructive and quite unnecessary exercise incompatible with the overriding objectives” of the college jurisdiction for the court to “resolve the predictable and inevitable conflict of factual account” between members of the family, including the objectors and the petitioner.
The lack of contribution towards the price of the memorial was “little question woven into the family dispute”, the Chancellor said, and she or he was not “inclined to return to evidenced conclusions about them”. The incontrovertible fact that someone was paying for a memorial, nevertheless, didn’t mean that their proposals should be followed. The overarching objective for churchyards to serve the needs of all their visitors as sites of quiet reflection and remembrance outweighed any such consideration.
In regard to the headstone, the Chancellor said that she would favor it “if the wording engraved on churchyard memorials were grammatical and tasteful”.
The word “passed”, which had been used on the proposed memorial as a substitute of “died”, or “passed away”, was not “attractive or, in a linguistic sense, appropriate”. Also, the words “reunited again” were a tautology, and the petitioner was urged to reconsider and use “reunited” or “united again”.
Overall, the Chancellor found the memorial overcrowded with sentiments and would want for a more minimalist design. Those points of the memorial, nevertheless, may very well be left to the bereaved and the incumbent to navigate together within the context of the overarching objective for churchyards.
The memorial in the form of a book was permitted, subject to the condition that the Christian names of all the kids and grandchildren of the deceased were included, or that no names of the bereaved family were included. The inclusion of the names of a collection of the bereaved was not permitted.
The poppy design to be engraved was to be limited to a top level view in the identical color as the remaining of the engravings, either gold or white. It must not be in color.
The Chancellor remarked that some colored engravings were “creeping into some churchyards” and “shouldn’t be permitted”.
Owing to the character of the family dispute involved, the petitioner and other members of the family weren’t named by the Chancellor.
