The petitioner, a Buddhist for 50 years, sought a faculty to erect a memorial in the shape of a Buddhist stupa in his local parish churchyard, with an inscription bearing his name, year of birth and death and the words ‘He wanted green dandelions’. He petitioned before his death so as to save his wife from having to court controversy in seeking to implement his wishes once widowed. His wife, a practising Anglican and member of the Parochial Church Council and choir, wished to be buried in the churchyard and he wanted them to be buried together. The petitioner had a right to burial in the churchyard. He claimed that the inscription was a Zen Buddhist koan. The memorial was within the dimensions prescribed by the churchyard regulations and had been sculpted by a master stone carver. The petition was supported by the incumbent, the burial authority, the archdeacon and the Diocesan Advisory Committee but was opposed by an objector. The objections included concerns that erecting a memorial of this size and on a vacant plot would set a dangerous precedent.

The chancellor held that the memorial was within the dimensions and from materials permitted by the churchyard regulations. He also held that, although it was unusual, the discretion to permit a memorial was not limited to post-mortem applications. Accepting that allowing the erection of a monument before death would set a dangerous precedent, he held that the question remained whether a faculty should be granted now which permitted the erection of memorial after death.

Considering the respective faiths of the petitioner and his wife, the chancellor doubted whether, in the event that the wife pre-deceased the petitioner, she would wish to be buried beneath a Buddhist monument rather than a traditional Christian memorial. Considering the authorities, he found that, while executors should consider the deceased's wishes, they were not bound by them and there were no post-mortem human rights in respect of burial. The faculty was refused as being premature and unnecessary given the uncertainty about the views of the personal representatives of the petitioner and his wife as to memorials and location of burial at the time of death. An analogy was drawn with a petition for the reservation of a grave space, which is often refused where space is limited. The chancellor did accept that the churchyard was available to all ratepayers regardless of beliefs but that it was, nonetheless, consecrated ground. Obiter, the chancellor observed that the proposed inscription would not readily be understood as a Buddhist koan, nor did it honour the dead, comfort the living or inform posterity, but was likely merely to cause amusement, which was not the purpose of such an inscription. [Catherine Shelley]