In 1945, the City of Edinburgh took up its responsibilities for post-War reconstruction. Allocating sufficient space for needs of housing, schools, agriculture, transport and burials proved increasingly complex. The Victorian solution had been to supplement the old parish churchyards by a reliance on private cemeteries but only three more private cemeteries had been opened between 1898 and 1928. Warriston Crematorium was opened in 1929 and by 1939 was the place of committal for one-sixth of the City’s deaths. […]

This paper will describe the lengthy process from 1868 – 1947 by which the Anglican Church of Wales came to be disestablished, and the consequences for its burial grounds. The paper will shed some light on  what may happen to a Church’s property (which will include its burial  grounds if it has any) when a Church is disestablished, and remark on the fate, after disestablishment, of any public rights that exist in the burial grounds at the time of disestablishment, […]

This paper explores the implications of natural burial for the funeral profession. Its discussion is underpinned by data gathered during a three-year ESRC funded project which explored the cultural, social and emotional implications of natural burial in the UK. The paper’s arguments are supported by data from interviews with funeral directors who fall into three discrete groups: 1) individuals who extended disposal options for their bereaved clientele through buying land in order to accommodate natural burial; […]

This paper is concerned with identifying if there are distinctions between natural burial sites and other more familiar, ‘traditional’ burial places using the case study woodland burial ground of my doctoral research. This particular site is consecrated and affiliated to the Church of England. The provider’s aim is to establish a deciduous native woodland, hence why the site is referred to as a ‘woodland’ burial ground. On the one hand the legal aspects of this provision make the site similar to a churchyard, […]

Theoretical debate on cemeteries generally relates to one of two discourses: that cemeteries demonstrated the hold of middle-class ideals on the construction of urban environments, where even in the realms of death the expression of status and class were a central concern; and that the cemetery was essentially a modern phenomenon that displaced and marginalized the dead, so reflecting a profound societal unease with evidence of mortality. These models position the cemetery very firmly in the context of the nineteenth-century city, […]

Cemeteries are frequently sites of contestation. Grave owners and cemetery managers; clergy and the public; interest groups and mourners; ‘romantics/conservationists’ and ‘tidiers’; new and traditional user groups – to cite a few of the groups that can sometimes find themselves in opposition. The living and the dead rarely seem to be pitched in battle, though ‘ the liminal power of the mourner’ (Turner, 1969) sometimes seems to invoke the dead to render the living more powerful or dominant in contest. […]

This paper presents ongoing PhD research examining the legal framework, rules and regulations of the Church of England relating to disposal of the dead with some comparison with state regulation. The paper reviews the roles of the PCC and incumbent as regulators and policy makers in the churchyard. A key point in the research is establishing the functional public authority status of the PCC for s6(3)(b) and 6(5) Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) (contra to finding of House of Lords in Wallbank litigation) by reference to the on-going case law usually linked to social housing and care homes for the elderly, […]

This paper offers a case study of burial and commemoration at York Cemetery from 1837 to 1901. The cultural significance of cemeteries is embodied by their design as a specific form of burial landscape and by their use as an arena to express social relationships as signified by the selection of a burial plot, funeral service, memorial and inscription and by visits to the gravesite. York Cemetery’s own unique history was embedded within the nationwide – indeed international – movement to establish modern cemeteries. […]

The paper explores the reasons why people are choosing natural burial, either for themselves or a deceased relative/friend.  It presents data from a 3 year ESRC-funded programme of empirical work in UK natural burial grounds which is exploring the extent to which natural burial represents: creative resistance to modernist disposal strategies, as epitomised in the cemetery; an aspect of the re-enchantment of death and a resurgence of Victorian romanticism; a form of ecological immortality expressed in a  more collective response to death; […]

The Spanish ‘Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919 killed tens of million worldwide. In England it is estimated that around 228,000 died during the three ‘waves’ – June/July, October/November 1918 and in February the following year. While much research has been carried out into the onset and spread of the Pandemic, issues concerning disposal of the dead have received little attention. Drawing on range of archive materials, including newspaper reports, council minutes, Medical Officer of Health reports, cemetery registers and funeral directors’ records, […]

This paper will examine the aetiology of ‘exhumation from lawful burial’ (ELB) in the context of criminal investigations, with specific reference to the secular and ecclesiastical law. It will also examine how ELB has become a valuable part of the crime investigators armoury of investigative strategies concerning death enquiries. Historically, the use of ELB by Coroners appears to have been common-place as the deceased were buried speedily after death. There was a requirement for the coroner and jury to view the body before he (the coroner) deliberated upon the cause(s) of death. […]

Grave re-use was common in the UK for hundreds of years, but legislation introduced in the mid-nineteenth century made the practice illegal.  As a result, cemeteries must continually expand in order to accommodate further interments.  Many cemeteries incorporate vast areas of old burial that generate no income, are no longer visited and are poorly maintained.  The recent proposal by Government to reintroduce grave re-use seems straightforward in theory, but UK cemeteries were not designed to be re-used.  […]

Some historians have argued that the Great War of 1914-1918 precipitated a decentring of the corpse from popular commemorative ritual. One piece of evidence routinely cited for this argument is increases in the cremation rate following the Great War. However, I would suggest that the Great War did not influence popular disposal and commemoration practices to the extent that some have argued, and that even today the body remains firmly at the centre of popular commemorative strategies. […]

Focusing on Bristol and York, this paper will present a general outline of the treatment of urban burial grounds during the long eighteenth century. It will consider their upkeep and their use for purposes other than burial, before considering the responses of parish authorities to their increasing overcrowding, which took the form of extensions or the establishment of separate additional burial grounds. As part of this, it will look at the ways in which burial grounds were continually reshaped in accordance with the needs of the living, […]

Throughout the nineteenth century, the city of Glasgow exhibited many of the difficulties in a rapidly urbanising and industrialising environment. Its high mortality rate and its poor levels of public health increased pressures on burying ground provision, further exacerbated by local patterns of wealth distribution and of migration, the structure of local government, and the characteristics of funeral arrangements in Presbyterian Scotland. These were the major factors behind the conditions in Glaswegian burying grounds which social reformer found unacceptable. […]

The pioneering St Mungo’s Burying Ground, which was established by Glasgow Town Council in 1832, introduced a number of modern and rational improvements over the crowded churchyards of the city. The three drivers of the cemetery were a rapidly rising population, a cholera epidemic and a changing set of beliefs around burial and commemoration. The cemetery was remarkable in a number of ways: it was lit by gas, drained by sewers, planted with shrubs and had wide carriage roads round and through it. […]

Despite the increasing profile of cremation in England during the interwar years, local authorities still needed to provide land for the preferred mode of disposal – burial. Those in urban areas with nineteenth century cemeteries approaching capacity looked outside their boundaries for suitable sites. In 1929 the Urban District Council of Willesden acquired land for burial purposes in an adjacent municipal area. Although it was not immediately prepared for burials, over the next thirty years the authority encountered an unprecedented level of opposition from Wembley borough. […]

The paper is concerned with the analysis of interview transcripts and aims to provide insights into personal perceptions of death, dying, and care of the deceased. The interview data draws on initial research undertaken as part of a three-year ESRC funded project considering the cultural, social and emotional implications of funerary practices, grouped under the generic term of ‘natural burial’. The project will consider how varied interpretations, typologies and memorial practices have created diverse burial landscapes. […]

By 1930 the campaign for cremation was fifty-six years old. Yet the persistence of the British burial tradition had confounded most attempts by cremation’s promoters to persuade the British to adopt cremation as an alternative to burial. In 1930 over 99% of funerals involved burial. The Council for the Disposition of the Dead (CDD) was a new initiative of the Cremation Society, intended to promote cremation as one of several funeral reforms. These reforms would be pursued in cooperation with a wide range of other organisations both within funeral service and beyond, […]

What happens to the geraniums when an avid gardener dies? In this paper I suggest that it is possible to map ways in which domestic places and spaces get enacted in and negotiated through engagements with death. Drawing upon ongoing research into New Zealand’s and UK’s attitudes to and practices around death, the paper discusses ways in which domestic suburban gardens operate as, and become sites to, renegotiate social relationships transformed through death.