A WORKING party arrange 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 greater than 50 years. They got here into being because each bishop had the final word responsibility for the churches and churchyards of their diocese. The bishop’s responsibility was to see that what was there and what was done there have been consistent with the religion that the Church proclaimed.
The way through which that responsibility was exercised had developed over the centuries, and far of the sensible aspect had been delegated to diocesan chancellors, who, through the college jurisdiction of their consistory courts, gave permission for any changes within the church or churchyard. Diocesan chancellors saw a must update the regulations.
There were several reasons for that. There had been changes in the provision of some varieties of stone, and there have been some issues about whether importation of stone was appropriate, although imported stone was considerably cheaper. There had also been a big change in cultural expectations about epitaphs.
Two particular discussions amongst chancellors led to the sense that there was a necessity positively to progress ideas about revision. The first was a discussion about memorials for kids. There had often been requests to permit memorials in several dimensions and shapes with different inscriptions from the sort permitted by the regulations. The query then arose whether special provision could and must 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 a few request for an inscription on a memorial in Irish Gaelic of words meaning “in our hearts for ever”. The consistory court refused to allow 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 with out a translation, but the interpretation needed to be entered on the parish record.
Although, now and again, what was not allowed to be said on a memorial had attracted newspaper headlines, that was the primary time lately that an appellate court had considered a matter 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 big section of the report of the working party.
The working party stated that the intention was not to provide a uniform set of regulations, since there have been often good reasons for various regulations in several parts of the country, similar to type and color of local native stone. There was also an awareness, nevertheless, that significant differences between adjoining dioceses might be confusing for those involved within the industry and dealing across diocesan boundaries. And it might be much more confusing for families of the deceased who would have little idea that there have been things like regulations in any respect, let alone why they differed from place to position.
The working party considered “non-standard cases”, through which chancellors had, through the years, needed to cope with petitions to introduce memorials that didn’t comply with the desired standards. The reported cases covered a wide range of issues on which there seemed “to be no end to the ingenuity and number of what some bereaved families request”.
The working party said that the underlying principle was “not that if it will not be permitted within the regulations you can’t have it, but whether there may be an excellent case made out for allowing what’s requested to be introduced into the actual churchyard”. It was often stated that the grave space didn’t belong to the family, that what was erected by the use of a memorial needed not only to respect and reflect the atmosphere of the churchyard because it was, but in addition to be appropriate as a memorial to the deceased. It was also more likely to be in place for a few years and would outlive the relations who had erected it in memory of their much loved relative.
The report said, nevertheless, that there was a big variety of petitions which had as a standard theme that what the family wanted was not permitted by the regulations but there have been already several like memorials within the churchyard. The commonest such request related to black polished granite memorials with gilded lettering, which most regulations didn’t 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 latest incumbent, normally supported by the PCC, wished to comply with the regulations. Those cases could develop into locally high-profile and controversial when the bereaved family looked to the local media for support. Those cases were “all the time seen pretty much as good copy by journalists”.
The working party referred to one among the earliest cases coping 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 didn’t allow monuments with “mirror polished” surfaces nor those “polished beyond an excellent smooth surface”. The chancellor granted the petition and observed that “there are churchyards where it might sometimes be unwise to use 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 within the regulations.
Another case referred to was In re St Helen, Selston, in July 1995, a few petition for a sophisticated 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 don’t have any hope of legally holding the road in future.”
The working party proposed that every chancellor should start a review of their very own diocesan regulations immediately. The chancellor shouldn’t only engage with their diocesan advisory committee and archdeacons, but in addition with local funeral directors and memorial masons and talk to those that knew the diocese well the extent to which they needed to seek the advice of more widely in the local people in order to concentrate on relevant diversity issues. Although there have been significant differences between the regulations in several dioceses, all of them embodied an underlying approach to what was considered generally appropriate in a churchyard.
The working party did, nevertheless, recognise that that approach — articulated, for instance, within the Churchyards Handbook (2012) — didn’t command universal support, and, specifically, that potentially it could conflict with the several expectations embodied within the culture of particular communities. Historically, travelling communities had been one such group in some dioceses, although sometimes isolated to only one or two particular parishes. The purpose of the consultation can be to enable the diocese and all communities to work together to seek out a way forward in relation to memorialisation inside the diocesan regulations, which can be kept under review as times and communities modified.
The report recommends that every diocese produce an additional-matters order (AMO), to follow the template provided within the report, to state what memorials could also be allowed without the necessity of a school in that diocese. Almost half of the report accommodates detailed recommendations for the content of those AMOs, including the form, size, and materials for memorials, the identification of the “incumbent” who may consent to the burial of somebody who has no right to burial within the churchyard or parish burial ground, and even using metric measurements for memorials.
