That Was Close I m Not Going Back to the Cemetery Again

One of United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland's biggest cemeteries is leading the way on a solution to the nationwide shortage of grave spaces that's reaching crisis levels.

Experts say finding ways to end cemeteries inundation is vital, but the most constructive manner of doing so – re-using graves – challenges some people's deeply held behavior about burial.

The City of London Cemetery in the eastward of the urban center has already re-used ane,500 graves. In most cases this involves deepening the grave and so the original remains are lower in the footing, and making a 2d burial on peak. Its superintendent Gary Burks said the number it had done already is proof it tin exist done sensitively. "If people don't want a grave re-used, it won't exist," he said, simply there have been just a handful of objections.

Graves chosen for re-use must exist at to the lowest degree 75 years onetime and notices are posted on the headstone and in advertisements for six months beforehand. If there is an objection, the grave will be left untouched. If non, the new inscription is engraved on the back of the headstone, which is then reversed, preserving the old inscription.

"With and then many, after 75 years, families have moved away and the graves are not visited any more than."

The cemetery, 160-years-old and grade one listed for its mural, hosts the remains of 780,000 people but, with 1,000 new burials a year, it was on the verge of running out of space. Other cemeteries have been cramming in more and more than plots, by excavation up roads and fifty-fifty creating child graves in grass verges.

The City of London Cemetery grave — Headstones can be turned around to have old inscriptions on the back and new ones on the front. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

But Burks said preserving the dignity of his 200-acre cemetery is vital: "The City of London planned very carefully [when opening the cemetery in 1856] so people thought their relatives were going to be buried somewhere special. I must respect the fact that this place is very cute."

Burks has just converted a waste product area into a four-acre site for new graves and said this, combined with the re-use of existing graves, will mean the cemetery will be the first in the UK to able to provide burials in perpetuity.

Despite a severe shortage in grave space in many parts of the state, the City of London Cemetery is almost lonely in re-using graves. "We take been saying for years we are heading towards a crisis and it'due south getting worse," said Tim Morris, chief executive of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management. "In the terminate, burial could be priced out of beingness. Re-use is the only sustainable option available."

The Ministry of Justice, responsible for cemeteries, told the Guardian that at that place is no national assessment of grave spaces. Morris said the best estimate is from a 2013 BBC survey, which found half of all cemeteries in England would be full in 20 years.

In the capital, the state of affairs is critical. A 2010 written report, by Dr Julie Rugg, a cemetery expert of the Academy of York, establish eight boroughs were already full and nine more would run out of space past 2020. "We ran out of space quite some time ago," she said, adding a national audit must be done.

Cremation has grown over the past century and is now the choice of iii-quarters of people, merely has levelled off in the last decade, significant demand for burying is no longer falling. Grave re-use is only currently legal in crowded London, although the Scottish parliament passed a constabulary in March paving the way to re-use.

"If it was available across England and Wales, it would hateful no new cemeteries would exist needed and existing ones could exist used for generation after generation," said Morris. Opening new cemeteries does not help if they are far from family homes and, Morris said, they are non financially sustainable as the income from burials remains the same while the maintenance costs of new and existing cemeteries grow.

Notwithstanding, grave re-apply can enhance strong emotions. The London Borough of Southwark is considering grave re-use but has encountered some strong local opposition.

"Southwark's whole project is horrific," said John Repsch, a local resident. "My grandmother is buried in a common grave in Camberwell New Cemetery. Southwark councillors are acting like grave robbers. This is theft – of my grandmother'south grave, of our family history, of the respect and nobility I want my grandmother to accept in death." Southwark councillors said the wishes of all families would exist fully respected and charge the protesters of "scaremongering".

Rugg said most people who exercise not like the idea of grave re-use imagine a recent dead trunk, which they come across every bit "nearly alive", being moved. But she said people are usually much more accepting of the moving of fragmentary remains: "Frequently those [onetime] graves are empty. We need to recall virtually where is the impairment confronting what is the good."

The Southwark campaigners also oppose turning some woodland into a new cemetery. But Morris said: "If Southwark were to re-utilise graves, the forest would remain. You lot can't have it both ways. If any of those protesters accept objections [to a grave re-use] they but have to register that objection and it won't go ahead."

Justice minister Caroline Dinenage said: "The re-use of burial space is a sensitive consequence and whatever potential changes in this area, including whatever legislation, would require careful consideration. Nosotros accept been actively engaging with stakeholders and will consider whether at that place is a need for government to take action in due course."

Rugg is unconvinced: "I am not expecting anything spectacular."

Progress on solving the grave space crunch is likely to accept fourth dimension, based on past form. The trouble has been building for over 150 years, since the Burial Act of 1857 banned the exhumation of bodies to let grave re-use. Every bit cities became crowded subsequently the industrial revolution, churchyards overflowed and, although re-utilize had been mutual, the public were horrified as recent burials were dug upwardly. Re-utilize remains legal under church police but many churchyard burial grounds are at present closed.

Back at the City of London cemetery, Burks, who first came to alive in the cemetery at the historic period of half dozen when his father became a gardener in that location in 1971, is sanguine well-nigh his own funeral arrangements: "I think there will exist space for me here, but that will be for my daughter to decide."