Chester Consistory Court; Lomas Ch, March 1998
A faculty was sought for the removal of 25 lead coffins from the crypt where they had been placed between 1784 and 1882 and for their reinterment in a newly-consecrated part of the church's burial ground. The chancellor considered that the case came within the exception to the Burial Act 1857, s 25, and that accordingly a Home Office licence for the removal of the bodies from 'one consecrated place of burial to another' was not required. Although in a crypt, rather than in the ground, he considered that the bodies were 'buried' and that, in reality, the crypt and the burial ground were separate places of burial. He noted, and expressed surprise, that the Home Office had recently come to the conclusion that where a body is removed from one grave to another within the same churchyard it is not the case of a body being removed from one consecrated place of burial to another, and felt obliged to warn the petitioners that his judgment would not protect them should the Home Office take a contrary view on the applicability of section 25. The chancellor then addressed the factual issues and granted a faculty subject to conditions. Note: The Home Office has now decided once more to regard reinterments in the same churchyard under faculty as not requiring a Home Office licence. It would seem that exhumation and reinterment in the same grave still requires a licence as well as a faculty.
(1998) 5 Ecc LJ 134
