The cremated remains of the petitioner's late father had been interred at Burnley Crematorium, where a memorial was installed on a memorial wall. The petitioner's late mother had subsequently been buried in the churchyard of St Mary, Canwell. The policy of the crematorium was that the memorial would, in time, be removed; the petitioner sought a faculty for its installation at the foot of the headstone marking her mother's grave. Two issues arose.
This first issue was whether a memorial would be permitted in the absence of the deceased's remains in the churchyard in question. This would not normally be permitted but could be allowed in exceptional circumstances, one of which was the absence of any memorial elsewhere. However, if permitted, care should normally be taken to guard against the impression that the deceased's remains are present: St Peter, Limpsfield [2004] 1 WLR 2504; and St Peter and St Paul, Nutfield [2018] ECC Swk 1. In the present case, the existing plaque did not indicate the absence of the deceased's remains but, if it had been otherwise acceptable, that would not have been a compelling factor against the grant of a faculty, the expense and waste involved in requiring a new memorial outweighing the risk of such a misleading impression.
Thus the second issue arose. The deceased had been a Grand Master in the Freemasons. While the wording on his memorial was unexceptional, the memorial also included the masonic symbol of a set square and compass. The court considered the persuasive authority of re St Oswald, Dean [2016] ECC Car 5, and found no reason to depart from its conclusion: that, while not determining any question of the compatibility of freemasonry and Christianity, the court acknowledged that the formal structures of the Church of England had confirmed that there were fundamental questions in that regard. It followed that the introduction of a memorial bearing the masonic symbol had the potential to cause controversy and offence and would not be permitted. The fact that the memorial was already in existence could not change that conclusion. [DW]
