The parents of a stillborn baby sought a faculty to install on his grave a heart-shaped blue pearl granite stone memorial measuring 27 inches by 21 inches by 3 inches. Stars were to be etched around the edge of the memorial and a heart was to be etched underneath the proposed inscription. Although the diocesan churchyard regulations expressly stated that an incumbent does not have delegated authority to permit a memorial in the shape of a heart, there were three other heart-shaped memorials in the churchyard in question which had not been authorised by faculty.

The chancellor took into account the importance, effect and purpose of churchyards and of memorials in them. The consistory court has an important responsibility to ensure that what is placed in our churchyards is both fitting and appropriate, and the regulations are important in fulfilling that responsibility. The correct test when deciding whether a memorial which fell outside the regulations should be approved was whether the petitioners had shown a good and substantial reason why it should be so approved.

Noting – and endorsing – the explanation in the Churchyards Handbook (fourth edition) that heart-shaped memorials have been discouraged by church authorities as alien to the churchyard setting and liable to be trivialised by repetition, the chancellor decided that the petitioners’ reasons – that the heart is a symbol of love, that they did not believe that there would be any issue with the shape of the proposed memorial, and that there were other heart-shaped memorials in the churchyard – did not justify him granting a faculty for a further heart-shaped memorial. [Jonathan Storey]