The petitioner sought a faculty for a memorial outside the scope of the Diocesan Churchyard Regulations to commemorate her parents, members of the Travelling Community. The original design significantly exceeded regulation parameters, featuring a 3′3′′ high polished blue pearl granite headstone with carved angel, three-dimensional climbing roses, built-in vases, and inlaid photographs. The Team Rector and PCC objected on aesthetic and maintenance grounds, and the DAC did not recommend approval. Following extensive pastoral liaison, substantial modifications were negotiated, resulting in a revised design using honed dark grey granite, a traditional ogee line, a simpler central angel, and without photographs or built-in urns. The family’s concessions were recognised as significant.
The case highlighted tensions between Travelling Community traditions and established churchyard practice. The court had regard to a report by Gemma Challenger for the group Friends, Families and Travellers, and a study by Pauline Lane of Anglia Ruskin University entitled ‘The Last Journey: The Funeral Rites and Cultural Needs of Gypsies and Travellers’. It also considered two recent decisions from other dioceses, Re St John the Evangelist, Nursling with Rownhams [2024] ECC Win 4 and Re St Peter, Terwick [2023] ECC Chi 3. These explained the cultural significance of memorial features, particularly the importance of a cover slab as protection for the grave.
The proposed memorial would be installed in an extension area separated from the main churchyard by hedging, containing relatively few memorials with notable variety in existing designs. The extension area already featured prominent raised kerbs, diverse stone types, and various etched details, distinguishing it from the more uniform main churchyard adjacent to the Grade II listed church.
Applying the merits-based approach in Re St Giles, Exhall, the court rejected the presumption against memorials outside the Churchyard Regulations. The objections were framed in general aesthetic terms without elaboration, raising subjective considerations which were inappropriate in an area of the churchyard already lacking homogeneity. The revised design, whilst more elaborate than surrounding memorials, would not appear incongruous in context; and the cover slab, culturally non-negotiable for the family, would not differ significantly from existing kerbed graves. A faculty would issue as sought.
