The petitioners sought a faculty for a memorial for their mother who had been buried in the churchyard in December 2017. The form of the proposed memorial, a birdbath, was outside the diocesan churchyard guidelines. The court noted that the possible objections to any memorial outside the guidelines could be theological, aesthetic or practical. In this case there were no theological objections. The Parochial Church Council was in favour of the petition but the archdeacon and Diocesan Advisory Committee were concerned about setting an inappropriate precedent. The chancellor noted that it would be located at the end of a row of graves, near an area where other mourners had hung bird feeders. It was not therefore aesthetically problematic. In the particular circumstances of this petition, for a memorial to someone who had been so immersed as a volunteer in the life of the community, the chancellor decided that a precedent would not be set, and granted the faculty.

The proposed inscription was a family saying, ‘The goat's milk is sour’, which had generally been used to ease family tensions. The chancellor found that the wording was ‘unusual’; however, as there were no objections and the wording was unlikely to set a precedent, the chancellor approved the wording, subject to a condition that a note be recorded of its derivation and meaning. [Catherine Shelley]