The petitioner was a funeral director, supported by the next of kin, who sought the exhumation of Brenda Owens and her daughter Angela for re-interment elsewhere within the churchyard in order to rectify a failure to bury at a sufficient depth to enable the double burial. The natural settlement of the soil following Angela's burial meant that the top of her coffin had become exposed. The sandy nature of the soil in the churchyard made it impractical to remove both coffins in order to deepen the grave. The chancellor referred to Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, where it was stated that where interment has been in the wrong grave ‘faculties can … readily be granted because they amount to the correction of an error in administration rather than being an exception to the presumption of permanence’. The chancellor held that the presumption of permanence equally did not apply to an interment in a plot or grave where the remains cannot be preserved in a seemly manner. This meant that Angela's remains could be exhumed. Brenda's remains, however, were preserved in a seemly manner, but the risk of splitting of an existing family grave amounted to exceptional circumstances justifying an exception to the presumption of permanence. Accordingly exhumation and re-interment were allowed so as to enable both women to be buried together in a reconstituted family grave. The chancellor doubted that he had power to make a requested order preventing the subsequent use of the original burial plot but suggested that it would be appropriate pastorally to observe a two-year moratorium on use of the plot. [Catherine Shelley]