Chichester Consistory Court: Edwards Ch, July 1999

A faculty was sought for the erection of a plaque commemorating the formation in March 1800 of the Experimental Corps of Riflemen of Horsham. The DAC recommended the installation of the plaque. The chancellor noted that following the cases of Dupuis v Parishioners of Ogbourne St George [1941] P 119, Re St Nicholas, Brokenhurst [1958] Fam 157 and Re St Margaret's Eartham [1981] 1 WLR 1129 it was now well established that faculties for the erection of memorial tablets should only be granted where exceptional grounds were shown and that there was a heavy burden on petitioners to demonstrate that there were such grounds. In declining to grant the faculty sought he stated that this burden was even heavier when the proposal was to place a memorial in an ancient church in which there were already many memorials added over the centuries and that the criterion of recording 'some important or significant aspect of local or national history' laid down in Re St Margaret's Eartham had not been shown in the present case. There was no proven link between the Corps and the parish church or the Church of England in a wider context.

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(2000) 5 Ecc LJ 388-389