Dear Friends,

Many visitors to All Saints’ and to St Martin’s are impressed by our beautifully maintained churchyards. Nowadays most city churches’ burial grounds are “closed” which means that there can be no more new burials. Sometimes “re-opening” is allowed to admit another family member when the grave was originally designed to accommodate more than one person. Country churches likes ours are much more likely to have “open” churchyards with space for new graves as well as re-openings.

A college friend of mine who is now a long-serving career vicar told me when I came here that open churchyards are a curse ! There are always awkward people, he claimed, who want a burial to which they are not entitled, who wish to build memorials outside the governing regulations, use unacceptable materials and litter the place with artificial flowers which the regulations do not permit.

We have an open churchyard and I cannot say that it is a curse to us. It is beautifully maintained and the graves are well cared for by the families of those interred there. It is a delightful aspect of the church’s premises as well as being an amenity for the local community.

All churchyards are governed by a lengthy and tedious set of regulations which are really a consequence of the Anglican church being established in this country. The churchyard is intended for the whole community of the parish, not just for those who are members of the Church of England. This means that any parishioner is entitled to a funeral in the parish church and to be buried in the churchyard. This applies whether they are Christians of any denomination, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists or whatever. We are not bound to extend this facility to people outside the parish but we often do so. This is especially that case for members of a village family who have moved away or to others with a manifest genuine connection to the parish. To my mind, the spirit of church