The petitioner was the sister of the deceased, who died in distressing circumstances during a police operation. His interment was arranged by his widow, who had disappeared with their children in unexplained circumstances shortly after his death, having apparently sold his assets and leaving the funeral director's fees outstanding. His sister wished to move his remains to a plot in a different cemetery where the deceased's father had been buried. That cemetery was not consecrated.
Section 14A(1) of the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Care of Churches Measure 2018 provides that
a decision of the Arches Court of Canterbury or the Chancery Court of York is to be treated by the other Court, and by the lower ecclesiastical courts in the province of the other Court, as if it were a decision which the other Court had itself taken.
Thus, in dioceses of the Northern Province, the court no longer needed to consider the test applied by the Chancery Court of York in Re Christ Church, Alsager [1999] Fam 142, to the extent that such test was revisited and reframed by the subsequent decision of the Court of Arches in Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299.
The examples of exceptional circumstances set out in Blagdon are not exhaustive. The court was satisfied that the wider family had not discussed the place of interment and that the trauma of the deceased's death gave rise to a febrile situation which denied all concerned the luxury of informed decision-making. The subsequent disappearance of the deceased's widow had created an abandoned and unmarked grave, the rights in relation to which were still vested in her. The desire to create a family grave found favour in Blagdon, although was not determinative.
However, the court would not countenance exhumation unless re-interment was in consecrated ground. This was both for doctrinal reasons and to ensure that the new place of burial was under the jurisdiction of the consistory court. The matter had proceeded without involvement of the deceased's widow and, while an application to set aside or amend the faculty was not anticipated, it was imperative that the court's power to do so not be rendered nugatory by the deceased's remains being placed beyond the court's jurisdiction. A faculty would be granted, subject to two conditions. First, the exhumation was not to be carried out until the registrar had confirmed in writing that the land where the remains were to be reinterred had been consecrated, and the cemetery maps and records amended accordingly. Second, the cremated remains were all to be reinterred in the designated plot and nowhere else. [DW]
