Running out of space – re-use graves?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13357909

Curious one, can’t imagine many people being happy with the idea. Doesn’t bother me, I’ll be dead and probably toasted, but I bet some people would be seriously miffed at it.

I saw that this morning. Can’t imagine there’s a lot left after 100 years. Wouldn’t bother me I don’t think. Anyone close enough to be upset would probably be dead too after that length of time.

Do you not watch horror films ?? There is only one way this can go…

😀

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i7gCB2kNwo[/video]

This is nothing new!! It has been done for centuries! That’s why the churchyards in old churches are often higher than the surrounding countryside. Our local gravedigger is always digging up old remains when he has to dig graves in very old churchyards where no records were kept. He just puts the few bones that are left in a bag, then when the relatives of the new burial have left he pops them back into the grave when he’s filling it in. It’s no problem except for a few people who seem to take offence at virtually anything these days. We tried to open up an old churchyard in my town that hasn’t been used for over 100 years, where no relatives ever visit to tend graves. But the PCC objected on the grounds it would offend ‘someone’. :0/

Can’t imagine there’s a lot left after 100 years.

You’d be surprised. Many years ago I worked on a site (housing) in Bethnal Green, iirc it had been a large garage/car dealership, but unknown to everyone it had previously been the site of a Victorian Workhouse. The Workhouse had buried its dead in its own grounds and when the diggers started to do their business, they unearthed countless graves.

Pretty much all the skeletons and coffins were intact and ended up strewn all over the site, even though the coffins were unsurprisingly just cheap things made of planks – tragically many were tiny ones for children.

At that time there were many Irish catholic building workers, and they got really spooked up and angry about the affair, and the press were called. As the graves were over 100 years old it was all legal, so just as a mark of respect the contractor had all the bones and bits of coffins collected and burnt in a heap – the sight of people’s skeletal arms or legs sticking out of the muck away lorries as they left the site and drove through London hadn’t been very pleasant.

I also remember the young plumbing apprentices perched like vultures on the scaffolding, waiting to swoop if the diggers unearthed an ‘interesting’ bone or piece of coffin – gruesome !

When I worked for the local council I use to help out grave digging if they were busy or I didn’t have much to do. If the coffins were oak or some other solid would they’ll last pretty well, when doing re-openers often an old oak coffin wouldn’t collapse when you got near it but modern coffins are chipboard that basically rot to nothing within 5 years. I’m pretty sure but I could be wrong that my local council re-use graves that are over 90 years old or they were on about it 12 years ago.

I guess there’s also plenty of archeological sites where bones much older than 100 years are found. My grandfather is buried in 4 berth grave, which will save a bit of space in due course I suppose.

Loving the line in the article “With no prospect that people will stop dying”

I places in Venice where grave space is a premium – you only keep your space in the cemetery for as long as people continue to visit and tend your grave. If your grave ceases to be be visited you get turfed out.

Makes perfect sense to me really – the grave isn’t for the deceased its for the friends and family that survive them.

You get 25 years in Switzerland.

Once your time is up, your descendants are informed that they can come and collect the gravestone. People then keep the grave stones in their houses, flats and gardens. A nice talking point i suppose…

the catacombs under gay paree are full of disinterred bones – my kids wouldn’t let me take em for a look when we were over there