The petitioner wished to exhume a small amount of the cremated remains of her late husband, who had died aged 38 some 16 years earlier. The purpose was to allow the creation of a commemorative ring for the petitioner's daughter, who was seven when her father died – a method of commemoration which was not available at the time of his death.

The court considered that none of the fact-specific categories of exhumation set out in re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299 was applicable to this case. It would not be appropriate or pastorally sensitive to refuse an otherwise meritorious petition on a floodgates argument alone. The question was whether the petitioner had demonstrated that the case constituted an exception to the general principle that there should be no disturbance of cremated remains interred in consecrated ground.

Advances in technology to allow something which was not possible at the date of the original interment could be considered to be exceptional. There would always be the possibility of fresh expressions of grief as societal practice and scientific know-how evolve. But that did not detract from the concept of permanence being part, at least, of the intention of those committing the remains to a consecrated burial plot. If changing fashions of mourning and the availability of alternative uses for cremated ashes were to justify the routine exhumation of human remains, the finality of Christian burial would be stripped of all its meaning.

While not concluding this as a matter of law, the court tended to the view that cremated ashes should be treated in like fashion to a human body and interred in one place, undivided. Where a faculty for an exhumation might be granted, the remains were almost invariably to be re-interred in consecrated ground (see, for example, re Clayton Cemetery, Bradford [2019] ECC Lee 2, (2020) 22 Ecc LJ 121). Here, part at least of SMF's remains would not be re-interred in consecrated ground.

The court noted an analogy with cases concerning petitions for an exhumation to permit the taking of tissue or bone samples. Faculties were refused in re Holy Trinity, Bosham [2004] Fam 125 and in the appellate case of re St Nicholas, Sevenoaks [2005] 1 WLR 1011, Ct of Arches. While a faculty was granted in re St Mary, Sledmere (2010, unreported), and in re London Road Cemetery, Mitcham [2016] ECC Swk 12, (2017) 19 Ecc LJ 127, each judgment emphasised the high hurdle set for petitioners in order to demonstrate exceptionality. Accordingly, the petition was dismissed. [DW]