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Churchyard Closures, Rural Cemeteries and the Village Community in Leicestershire and Rutland, 1800–2010

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2012

K. D. M. SNELL
K. D. M. SNELL
Affiliation:
Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester, 5 Salisbury Road, Leicester LE1 78QR; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article comprises a close analysis of churchyard extensions, closures and new cemetery provision in the English midland counties of Leicestershire and Rutland. It provides a graphic outline of these changes, and so extends cemetery history to rural as well as urban areas. The main periods of change examined are the 1850s, 1880–1900 and from the 1960s to 2010. Such a chronology, and its detailed processes and problems, has not hitherto been available for any region. This highlights the effects of these changes on senses of ‘community’, and their links to processes of secularisation, church viability and belonging.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 721 - 757
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 Bailey, B., Churchyards of England and Wales, Leicester 1987, 183Google Scholar.

2 Williamson, H., ‘Consecration of the new burial ground’, in his Life in a Devon village, London 1945, 266Google Scholar.

3 In this discussion the term ‘churchyard’ refers to Anglican churchyards only. A ‘Nonconformist burial ground’ means the burial ground of a Nonconformist chapel or meeting house. A ‘cemetery’ refers to a burial ground that has no specific denominational affiliation or priority, and (differing from medieval Latin usage) is here used in contrast to a churchyard, a churchyard extension or a Nonconformist burial ground. Other terminology will be clarified when used.

4 Curl, J. S., The Victorian celebration of death, Newton Abbot 1972Google Scholar; Barker, F. and Gay, J., Highgate Cemetery: Victorian Valhalla, London 1984Google Scholar; Meller, H., London cemeteries, London 1981Google Scholar; Brooks, C., Mortal remains: the history and present state of the Victorian and Edwardian cemetery, Exeter 1989Google Scholar; Pickles, J. D., The Victorian cemetery, Cambridge 1993Google Scholar; James, D., Undercliffe: Bradford's historic Victorian cemetery, Halifax 1991Google Scholar; Rawnsley, S. and Reynolds, J., ‘Undercliffe Cemetery, Bradford’, History Workshop Journal iv (1977), 215–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Curl, J. S., A celebration of death, London 1993Google Scholar; Kensal Green Cemetery: the origins and development of the General Cemetery of All Souls, Kensal Green, London, 1824–2001, London 2001; and The Egyptian revival, London 2005; Worpole, K., Last landscapes: the architecture of the cemetery in the west, London 2004Google Scholar; Scott, R., Death by design: the true story of the Glasgow Necropolis, Edinburgh 2005Google Scholar. Cemetery historiography is overwhelmingly urban.

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6 On the geography of religion in England and Wales see Snell, K. D. M. and Ell, P. S., Rival Jerusalems: the geography of Victorian religion, Cambridge 2000CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 I take here as ‘urban’ current populations in excess of 5,000, but the point stands regardless of what defining ‘urban’ figure is adopted. (‘Green’ burial grounds are excluded from these figures).

8 Chadwick, E., The sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain (1842)Google Scholar, Edinburgh 1965; Lewis, R. A., Edwin Chadwick and the public health movement, 1832–1854 (1952), London1968Google Scholar; Finer, S. E., The life and times of Sir Edwin Chadwick, London 1952Google Scholar; Brundage, A., England's “Prussian Minister”: Edwin Chadwick and the politics of government growth, 1832–1854, London 1988Google Scholar.

9 A supplementary report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interments in towns, xii, 1843.

10 The borough of Leicester had one of the highest urban death rates in England in 1838–42, at 28 per 1,000 population: Biggs, J. T., Leicester: sanitation versus vaccination, Leicester 1912, 246Google Scholar, 292; Woods, R., The demography of Victorian England and Wales, Cambridge 2000, 256CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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12 Burials (within the Metropolis) Act, 15 & 16 Vic. c. 85. This was extended to England and Wales by 16 & 17 Vic. c. 134 (1853), and later amended legislation, and it laid the foundation for subsequent law on the establishment and regulation of burial grounds throughout the country: Baker, T., The laws relating to burials, London 1873, p. viiiGoogle Scholar. Earlier acts regulating churchyards and burial grounds became largely redundant with the 1852 legislation.

13 By March 1893 England and Wales had 1,052 burial board districts: H. H. Fowler (president of the Local Government Board), Hansard x (21 Mar. 1893), 681. (Because of joint arrangements, these were not necessarily parochial). There were nearly 15,000 civil parishes. Under 56 & 57 Vic. c. 73 (1894), burial boards could continue, or their powers, duties and liabilities could be transferred in rural districts to parish councils or parish meetings, or to urban district councils. Parish councils or urban district councils lacking a burial board could adopt the Burial Acts and create cemeteries with money from the rates.

14 Sums were usually levied as additions to the poor rates: Hadden's overseer's handbook, London 1896, 167–8; Hadden's handbook on the Local Government Act 1894, London 1894, 49; Steer's parish law, London 1857, 66–7; 1855 Burial Act, 18 & 19 Vic. c. 128; Toulmin Smith, J., The parish: its powers and obligations at law, London 1857, 605Google Scholar. They could also be charged to future poor rates: Toulmin Smith, The parish, 605–6; Baker, Laws relating to burials, 52–4.

15 15 & 16 Vic. c. 85, s. 30; 16 & 17 Vic. c. 134, s. 7; Steer's parish law, 67–8; Baker, Laws relating to burials, 70.

16 15 & 16 Vic. c. 85; Baker, Laws relating to burials, 37.

17 This was permitted by 15 & 16 Vic. c. 85, s. 23. See also Steer's parish law, 66; Baker, Laws relating to burials, 38–42, 50.

18 58 Geo. III, c. 45.

19 For extended discussion of the ‘new parishes’ see Snell, K. D. M., Parish and belonging: community, identity and welfare in England and Wales, 1700–1950, Cambridge 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. vii.

20 Among the best discussions of the early nineteenth-century church-building movement are Port, M. H., Six hundred new churches: a study of the Church Building Commission, 1818–1856, and its church building activities, London 1961Google Scholar; Virgin, P., The Church in an age of negligence, London 1988Google Scholar; Norman, E. R., Church and society in England, 1770–1970: a historical study, Oxford 1976Google Scholar; Chadwick, O., The Victorian Church: I: 1829–1859 (1987)Google Scholar, London 1997; and Clarke, B. F. L., Church builders of the nineteenth century: a study of the Gothic Revival in England, Newton Abbot 1969Google Scholar.

21 Fletcher, R., The Akenham burial case, London 1974Google Scholar, and In a country churchyard, (1980), London 1986, ch. iv. Equivalent disputes in Wales focused upon the Llanfrothen (Merioneth) case (1888–9), involving the burial of a Calvinistic Methodist quarryman, success in which brought the young lawyer Lloyd George to prominence as a defender of Nonconformist rights under the 1880 Burial Act: Grigg, J., Lloyd George: the young Lloyd George, London 1997, 52–4Google Scholar.

22 A survey of major Nonconformist chapels in this region is Stell, C., An inventory of Nonconformist chapels and meeting-houses in central England, London 1986Google Scholar. This was not, however, intended to be comprehensive.

23 An excellent discussion of these burial issues in a proximate county is Ambler, R. W., Churches, chapels and the parish communities of Lincolnshire, 1660–1900, Lincoln 2000, 188–93Google Scholar.

24 Sir Thompson, H., Modern cremation: its history and practice, London 1889Google Scholar; Davies, D. J., Cremation today and tomorrow, Nottingham 1991Google Scholar; Jupp and Howarth, Changing face of death; Jupp, P. C., From dust to ashes: cremation and the British way of death, Basingstoke 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Leicestershire, where the main increase was in the period 1940–70, see E. S. Davidson, ‘The evolution and secularisation of the funeral in Leicester and Leicestershire, 1830–2010’, unpubl. ma diss. Leicester 2010, ch. iii.

25 Information from the Cremation Society of England, via the Ministry of Health, 11 Mar. 1926, Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (to which subsequent archival references pertain), DE 3468/26.

26 P. C. Jupp and T. Walter, ‘The healthy society: 1918–98’, in P. C. Jupp and C. Gittings (eds), Death in England, Manchester 1999, 256–82 at p. 265; advertisement for the Cremation Society, The Countryman (Summer 1977), 222.

27 For Leicestershire, the figure is now said to be higher than that, at about 80–85%: oral testimony of Mr E. F. Gilbert of A. J. Adkinson & Son, Funeral and Cremation Directors, 22 Oct. 2010. In Leicester itself the percentage cremated is about 90%, but in rural Leicestershire or Rutland probably about 60%. In more remote regions, for example Northumberland, that figure would be yet lower: oral testimony of Mr D. Ward of Ginns and Gutteridge, Funeral Directors, 22 Oct. 2010.

28 Oral testimony of Mr E. F. Gilbert, 22 Oct. 2010. According to his calculations, cremation costs are about £989: two doctors’ certificates (£73 each), cremation and service (£613), container (£55) and entry in a book of remembrance (£175). Churchyard interment of ashes (£114), with grave dug and service (£150), would add about £264. Churchyard burial expenses average about £1,350: use of the church and clergyman (£400), grave dug (£250), and an averagely-priced memorial (£700). By comparison a cemetery plot in Leicester (purchase and opening) would cost about £900. Mr D. Ward of Ginns and Gutteridge, Funeral Directors (oral testimony, 22 Oct. 2010) cites a figure of about £800 for a cemetery lawn grave if one lives within Leicester city limits, and double that if one does not. These cemetery figures do not include a memorial.

29 P. Jupp, ‘Cremation or burial? Contemporary choice in city and village’, in D. Clark (ed.), The sociology of death, Oxford 1993, 169–97 at pp. 174–7; T. Cocke (ed.), The churchyards handbook, London 2001, 56. Cremation percentages are much lower in many other countries, for example between 15% and 60% for America, Holland and Switzerland, suggesting that overcrowding has been a major factor in England.

30 Rugg, J., ‘Lawn cemeteries: the emergence of a new landscape of death’, Urban History xxxiii (2006), 213–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Consider, for example, the advice to remove iron railings and many memorials in Forder, C. R., The parish priest at work: an introduction to systematic pastoralia, London 1959, 130Google Scholar, and the report of the Central Council for the Care of Churches, The care of churchyards, Letchworth 1932, 10, complaining of how in the Victorian era ‘churchyards began to assume the restless and garish appearance that is now so distressing’.

32 The most influential expression of this view is Ariès, P., Western attitudes towards death: from the Middle Ages to the present (1974), London1976Google Scholar.

33 A churchyard ‘which has been in use for a millennium or so probably contains the remains of some 10,000 corpses’: Rodwell, W., Church archaeology (1981), London 1989, 146Google Scholar.

34 Churchyards can be fully open; ‘open for re-opens only’ (i.e. burial with a previously buried person); open for cremated remains only; or completely closed. Closures by Orders in Council or other means often stipulated the degree of closure, making many qualifications upon the Order, for example allowing on-going burial in brick-sealed graves or vaults, or allowing the burial of certain named persons.

35 The diocese of Leicester, comprising 324 churches (including the cathedral) and 237 parishes united into 123 benefices, states that it has no such data, and (when learning of this ESRC-funded research) asked whether I might compile the data for them.

36 On the distribution of denominations in Leicestershire and Rutland see Snell, K. D. M., Church and chapel in the north Midlands: religious observance in the nineteenth century, Leicester 1991Google Scholar, and Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems. There are 67 non-Anglican denominational burial sites in these two counties, of which 8 remain fully open for burial purposes. The denominations comprise: Baptist (36), Congregational, Presbyterian, United Reformed, Unitarian (15), Methodist (10), Roman Catholic (4), Quaker (1) and Evangelical Free Church (1).

37 For an introduction to cemetery sources see Rugg, J., ‘Researching early-nineteenth century cemeteries: sources and methods’, The Local Historian xxviii (1998), 130–44Google Scholar.

38 The London Gazette, a valuable source on churchyard closures, is available and searchable on-line: http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/ (accessed 20 Feb. 2010).

39 http://maps.google.co.uk/maps (accessed 20 Feb. 2010). These aerial images show individual memorials, and facilitate viewing of the location and lay-out of burial sites within or outside villages.

40 Some of these interviews are used here, and in a few cases pseudonyms have been used to safeguard interviewees.

41 Letter from diocesan registry, Peterborough, 31 Dec. 1896, DE 1225/129/3.

42 For examples DE 3896/26/1 (Cossington, 1974); DE 4554/9 (Hugglescote, 1913); DE 1717/58/63 (Ibstock, 1965); DE 1287/36 (Kegworth, 1877); DE 4809/121–3 (St Mary de Castro, Leicester, 1959); DE 3363/2 (Hoton, 1968); DE 1881/27/1 (Lyddington, 1944); DE 4362/241 (Market Bosworth, 1888); DE 2438/62 (Measham, 1907); DE 5422/3 (Nether Broughton, 1966); DE 1114/20 (Saxelby, 1965); DE 2632/8 (Wymondham, 1979). Faculties were also granted to allow parts of closed churchyards to be used for widening public highways: Edgerley, J. T. (ed.), Ecclesiastical law, London 1957, 396–7Google Scholar. This occurred with St Nicholas’ Church in Leicester in 1899.

43 This percentage is based on 234 Anglican churchyards for which reliable information is available.

44 In Hinckley, for example, St Mary's church was extended in 1767: sentence of consecration by the bishop of Lincoln, 1 June 1771, DE 1225/128.

45 Dale, W. L., The law of the parish church, London 1946, 93Google Scholar.

46 Aylestone, churchyard plan, n.d., DE 24 D 68/24f. Thirteen gravestones were removed here for this purpose. Given the burial overseas of many war dead, war memorials substituted for traditional individual burial and probably helped to undermine the graveyard tradition.

47 Claybrooke burial board minutes, 8 June 1896, DE 919/1, in this case with the bishop of Peterborough's consent. Glebe land was donated by the Revd Charles Houlbert for the 1886 extension at Nether Broughton (information from Ann Schmidt, 17 Feb. 2008).

48 Edith Weston PCC minutes, 29 Jan. 1980, DE 5032/115.

49 Plan and letters, following regulations approved by the Leicester Diocesan Advisory Committee, and by the Central Council for the Care of Churches and Churchyards, which were not obligatory but intended for the guidance of clergy and parochial church councils: DE 1067/10 (June 1938).

50 Churchyard extension papers, 1906, DE 727/26/ii. Some of the statements of cost, here and below, are probably best considered as lower costings, as it is not always certain from the evidence if they are the full completed expenses.

51 North Kilworth vestry and PCC minutes, 12 Jan. 1922, DE 697/15.

52 Peatling Parva vestry and PCC minute book, 1930–1, DE 4314/27. Or see Cottesmore's church extension bank account book for further details of expenses: DE 1920/54 (1948).

53 Archaeological survey, £2,950; planning fee, £335; unknown costs for solicitors, site clearance and levelling, fencing etc: information from representatives of Braunston PCC, 10 Mar. 2010.

54 This was a common expedient in the early twentieth century. For example, Newbold Verdon parish meeting minutes, 25 Nov., 29 Dec. 1919; 2 Mar. 1923, DE 3155/4; Peatling Magna, vestry and PCC minute book, 6 Oct. 1930; 14 Apr. 1931, DE 4314/27. See Cramp, H. St G., A yeoman farmer's son: a Leicestershire childhood, Oxford 1986, 15Google Scholar.

55 North Kilworth, vestry and PCC minutes, 1922, DE 697/15.

56 Sources of information here include those listed at p. 731 above; N. Pevsner, E. Williamson and Brandwood, G. K., Leicestershire and Rutland, Harmondsworth 1984Google Scholar; and information gathered on site and from church guides and similar publications. Pre-1820 restorations (for example, Carlton Curlieu, 1767) are not covered here. For further analysis of church restoration in these counties see in particular Brandwood, G. K., Bringing them to their knees: church-building and restoration in Leicestershire and Rutland, 1800–1914, Leicester 2002Google Scholar.

57 16 & 17 Vic. c. 134, s.1; Dow, P. and Drobig, R. A. C. (eds), Hobson's local government, London 1951, 65Google Scholar.

58 On issues of grave re-use see Davies, D. and Shaw, A., Reusing old graves: a report on popular British attitudes, Crayford, Kent 1995Google Scholar.

59 Hadden's overseer's handbook, 168.

60 For example under the 1972 Local Government Act.

61 Information from Mr Wilfred Coon, Blaston churchwarden, 17 May 2008 and 10 Aug. 2010.

62 With such thoughts in mind, the Revd Professor Richard Bonney wrote to me: ‘I suspect many incumbents and PCCs are quite glad that the churchyard is full and thus closed’ (19 May 2010).

63 Letter from diocesan registry re churchyard closure, Mowsley, 19 May 1938, DE 3389/64/1.

64 London Gazette, 13 June 1902, 3839; 4 May 1855, 1725.

65 For example, burial board minutes referring to the order for Barrow on Soar churchyard closure, 17 Apr. 1893, DE 502/9.

66 London Gazette, 29 June 1855, 2499.

67 These examples are from Barwell: rector of Barwell to the secretary of state, seeking exceptions, 30 Oct.1899, DE 4487/20/1–9.

68 London Gazette, 11 May 1858, 2352.

69 Cocke, T. (ed.), The churchyards handbook, London 2001, 50Google Scholar; ‘the Minister [of Health] has no authority to enable a Churchyard which has been closed by Order in Council to be re-opened for further burials’: Ridlington, letter from Douglas Veale, Ministry of Health, 11 Mar. 1926, DE 3468/26. Interments of urns containing cremated remains may, however, continue without his consent being required.

70 Ridlington, letter from Ministry of Health, 11 Mar. 1926, DE 3468/26. Remarks cited from the bishop of Rochester (1913).

71 Comparison of the mean populations is much more extreme: 853 contrasted with 31,460. ‘Fully open’ means available to parishioners for full body burial.

72 Such concern over customary clerical fees and their legal protection runs through much of the documentation, for example Sheepy Magna, Revd Southwell to Ecclesiastical Commission, 24 Apr. 1925, DE 1621/45/2.

73 For such argument see Toulmin Smith, The parish, 443–7.

74 Baker, Laws relating to burials, 74–85, 138–9, 163, 169–72, 179, 258, 281, 285–91. In Kibworth, for example, a scale of the fees payable to the burial board needed to be approved by the secretary of state, published in local newspapers, and affixed to doors of churches and chapels for three weeks: letter from solicitors, 1893, DE 5417/162/1.

75 18 & 19 Vic. c. 128.

76 15 & 16 Vic. c. 85, s. 19 (1852).

77 This sanitation priority is apparent in many villages. In Ketton, for example, there were sanitary debates about church vaults at the time of the 1881 churchyard closure: notice to close and papers regarding closure, 1881–97, DE 2995/18/1–4.

78 17 & 18 Vic. c. 87 (1854). Under 18 & 19 Vic. c. 128, s. 9, the 100 yards clause for new cemeteries applied unless there was unanimous consent of all owners, lessees and occupiers of houses within 100 yards. (This stipulation was also applied to Scotland in 18 & 19 Vic. c. 68). In some cases, as Owen Chadwick wrote, there was a ‘distance of several miles between a field where the dead lay and a church where the living worshipped’: Victorian Church, i. 328.

79 One thinks of cemeteries at Barrow on Soar, Belton in Rutland (an extreme case of distancing from the village), Billesdon, Broughton Astley, Burley, Cosby, Cottesmore, Countesthorpe, Desford, Earl Shilton, Empingham, Exton, Hallaton, Hathern, Hugglescote, Huncote, Husbands Bosworth, Ketton, Kibworth, Kirby Muxloe, Long Clawson, Manton, Market Harborough, Mountsorrel, Newtown Linford, Rothley, Sapcote, Scalford, Sheepy, South Luffenham, Stonesby, Swinford, Worthington or Wymeswold.

80 The term comes from the autobiography of the East Anglian writer Adrian Bell, My own master, London 1961, 163, describing Sudbury in Suffolk.

81 The Welford Road cemetery opened in 1849 and now has about 213,000 bodies in 40,000 graves. On the Leicester cemeteries see Davidson, ‘Evolution and secularisation’, 42–6.

82 Oral testimony of Mr G. Saunders, 7 Mar. 2010.

83 On Roman Catholicism in these counties see Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems, ch. viii. The presence here of Catholic landowners has had very slight influence on burial ground provision.

84 Brandwood, Bringing them to their knees, 22–3.

85 Taylor, A., The history of the English General Baptists, II: The New Connexion of General Baptists (1818), Paris, Ar. 2005, 190, 208, 263Google Scholar; Burgess, W. H., History of Loughborough Unitarian Congregation, being a chapter in the story of Loughborough Nonconformity: with some account of the old Mountsorrel Meeting House, Loughborough 1908Google Scholar; Evans, R. H., ‘Nonconformists in Leicestershire in 1669’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society xxv (1949), 122Google Scholar.

86 In some cases Nonconformists objected to dual chapels, arguing that if the established Church wanted a separate chapel – ‘erected to keep Christians apart in death as in life, and shewing that even death does not heal the unhappy differences which exist’ – they alone should pay for it: ‘The cemetery question’, Montgomeryshire Express and Radnor Times, 22 Mar. 1892. This article dealt with the general issues in Wales and England. It opposed consecration, preferring dedication, and objected to payment of fees to the parish incumbent, ‘as of right and without any duties performed’, particularly as cemeteries were paid for by all ratepayers.

87 Steer's parish law, 79.

88 Belgrave cemetery originally had a chapel, but it was demolished in the 1960s: http://www.leicesterchronicler.com/belgravecemetery.htm (accessed 20 Jan. 2010). The great variation in cemetery costs needs to be considered with their dates in mind.

89 Claybrooke burial board minute book, 27 Mar. 1860, DE 919/1.

90 Bitteswell, letter from incumbent, n.d., c. 1904, DE 759/32; Bitteswell, burial ground plan, DE 759/33; Bitteswell, itemisation of costs, 1903, DE 759/30/9; DE 759/30/3; DE 759/30/12.

91 Willoughby Waterless burial board minutes, 1904, DE 2000/10/ii.

92 Barrow on Soar burial board minute book, 28 Feb. 1894, DE 502/9.

93 Croft parish council minutes, 16 Nov. 1922; 14 Mar. 1923, DE 402/1; plan of proposed burial ground, 1923, DE 4368/66.

94 Willoughby Waterless, vestry minutes, 1904, DE 2024/4.

95 Claybrooke, burial board minutes, 1858, DE 919/1.

96 Appleby Magna, gift of land, 1876, 15 D 55/32.

97 Empingham, parish council minutes, 1919, DE 5006/1.

98 Conveyance of land to Ecclesiastical Commissioners, 7 May 1925, DE 1621/45/1.

99 PCC minutes, year ending Easter 1926, DE 1621/39/1–4.

100 Williamson, ‘Consecration of the new burial ground’ (see n. 2 above).

101 PCC minutes, year ending Easter 1926, DE 1621/39/1–4.

102 An example of the bishop agreeing the plan is in Claybrooke burial board minute book, 1859, DE 919/1; Steer's parish law, 67.

103 Newbold Verdon parish council minutes, 29 May 1924, DE 3155/1; Newbold Verdon parish meeting minutes, 25 Mar. 1924, DE 3155/4. The acrimony here ‘encouraged stupid and evil minded people to make false and lying statements about the Churchwardens’: 23 Mar. 1923, ibid. 112. On problems affecting the consecration of another rural Leicestershire cemetery (in a colliery village) see the letters at DE 4224/26–31 (Donisthorpe, 1875).

104 Barrow on Soar burial board minute book, 28 Feb. 1894, DE 502/9, 25.

105 Ibid. 26.

106 Toulmin Smith, The parish, 623–5.

107 Steer's parish law, 67.

108 18 & 19 Vic. c. 128, s. 10 (1855).

109 20 & 21 Vic. c. 81, s. 3 (1857).

110 Letter from diocesan registry, Peterborough, 31 Dec. 1896, re dispute in Hinckley, DE 1225/129/3.

111 The fees were laid down in 30 & 31 Vic. c. 135. On consecration fee payment see consecration fees, Bitteswell, 1903, DE 759/30/1.

112 Letter from the vicar of Bitteswell stressing the importance of the bishop's deed of consecration, n.d., c. 1904, DE 759/32; Bitteswell grazing rent agreement, 1902–3, DE 759/31; Barrow on Soar, burial board minutes, 30 May 1894, DE 502/9, 35.

113 For example, Barrow on Soar, burial board minutes, 1894, DE 502/9, 46–8; Claybrooke burial board minutes, 22 Mar. 1897, DE 919/1. Parishes today usually have quite strict residency requirements for use of their cemeteries, given limited space.

114 On joint boards see Toulmin Smith, The parish, 449; Baker, Laws relating to burials, 41–2; Hadden's handbook on the Local Government Act, 98; 15 & 16 Vic. c. 85, s. 24; 18 & 19 Vic. c. 128, s. 11; 20 & 21 Vic. c. 81, s. 1–2. Another Leicestershire example was Billesdon and Rolleston whose 1869 joint burial board perpetuated joint burial agreements in Billesdon churchyard that had been established in 1607. See account books, from 1869, DE 283/2/11; minutes of joint burial committee, 1954–97, DE 6428/4; Throsby, J., The supplementary volume to the Leicestershire views, ii, London 1790, 135Google Scholar. This joint burial committee still exists.

115 Loudon, J. C., On the laying out, planting and managing of cemeteries and on the improvement of churchyards, London 1843Google Scholar; Curl, J. S., ‘John Claudius Loudon and the garden cemetery movement’, Garden History xi (1983), 133–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘The architecture and planning of the nineteenth-century cemetery’, Garden History iii (1975), 13–41; Tarlow, S., ‘Landscapes of memory: the nineteenth-century garden cemetery’, European Journal of Archaeology iii (2000), 217–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116 Oral testimony of Mr C. Taylor, Wanlip, 5 Apr. 2010.

117 Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Jains and Sikhs in these two counties are strongly urban and have little relevance to discussion of rural burial practices. Cremation is contrary to Jewish law. Jews have since 1906 been buried in a specially consecrated section of Gilroes cemetery, and sometimes in Loughborough cemetery. Muslims have pioneered special burial provision at Saffron Hill and Gilroes cemeteries, while the Hindus, Sikhs and Jains opt for cremation.

118 This point is stressed in Ede, J., Williamson, T. and Virgoe, N., Halls of Zion: chapels and meeting-houses in Norfolk, Norwich 1994Google Scholar.

119 The parish, of course, while crucially and historically important in Anglican local organisation, is a unit within global Anglican organisation: Snell, K. D. M., ‘Parish pond to Lake Nyasa: parish magazines and senses of community’, Family and Community History xiii (2010), 46–71Google Scholar.

120 On ideas of ‘belonging’ and identity as revealed on grave memorialisation see idem, Parish and belonging, ch. viii.

121 Oral testimonies of Rosemary Elwell (Irish Catholic, Leicester); Siobhan Gallagher (Irish Catholic, Leicester); Aubrey Newman (Jewish, Leicester); Tiron Patel (Hindu, Leicester); Henry Reed (English Catholic, Barrow on Soar); Saadiya Riaz (Muslim, Leicester/Manchester); Mangal Singh Sahdra (Sikh, Leicester); Gourakh Sangera (Sikh, Leicester/Derby); Jan Szajkowski (Polish Catholic, Leicester); Hiroko Tomida (Japanese Shintoist, Leicester); Sonia Walker (Quaker, Leicester/Channel Islands); and Christine Vialls (Congregational, Kibworth).

122 Oral testimony of Mr G. Crawford, Newton Linford, 14 Mar. 2010. Or, as another interviewee explained: ‘We're united with somewhere else, Cossington I think. What did you call it, a united benefice? Or a parish? No, it can't be a parish can it? I don't know what they call it. Anyway, some of them attend here sometimes’: Mr C. Taylor, Wanlip, 5 Apr. 2010. Other respondents and interviewees tried to explain the meanings of ‘civil parish’, ‘ancient parish’, ‘church parish’, ‘church district’, ‘district church council’, ‘unified PCCs’ and so on. Most seem confused by, or ill at ease with, these terms, and some are clearly worried by possible legal ambiguities.

123 Information from Mr Wilfred Coon, Blaston churchwarden, 10 Aug. 2010.

124 A churchyard can also be a SSSI, given its flora, fauna, geology and so on.

125 Biggs, Leicester; Ellis, C. D. B., History in Leicester (1948), Leicester 1969, 102–3Google Scholar, 122; Buchanan, B. and Hulme, G., St Mark's Church, Leicester, Leicester 1996, 4–5, 13Google Scholar; Elliott, M. J., Victorian Leicester, London 1979Google Scholar.

126 Temple Patterson, A., Radical Leicester: a history of Leicester, 1780–1850, Leicester 1954, 247Google Scholar, citing the Leicester Chronicle, 18 Mar. 1848. Furthermore, Melbourne Hall (an Evangelical Free Church) in Leicester has often been called ‘the Cathedral of Nonconformity’.

127 ‘Closed’ here means no longer normally available for full body burial (i.e. included as ‘closed’ are those that only allow ‘re-opens’ and cremated remains, as well as totally closed ones). These percentages are not exact, as in a small number of cases information is hard to obtain or contradictory.

128 Redundant Churches Fund, Churches in retirement: a gazetteer, London 1990, 73–5Google Scholar; Churches in Leicestershire and Rutland cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust, London 2000.

129 Here there are cemeteries at places like Cleaton Moor, Dearham, Egremont, Flimby, Frizington, Maryport and Thornhill.

130 There are cemeteries at Caistor, Cleethorpes, Easington, Goxhill, Grimsby, Humberston, Immingham, Keyingham, Louth, Market Rasen, North Killingholme, North Somercotes, Patrington, Tetney, Waltham etc. This is also an area with many redundant churches (Alvingham, Clixby, Saltfleetby All Saints, Skidbrooke, South Somercotes, Theddlethorpe All Saints, Yarburgh, etc), but there seems not to be a immediate local connection between cemeteries and church redundancy, or between cemeteries and eastern airfield sites from the Second World War. Cottesmore in Rutland is the obvious exception; its cemetery has many RAF and USAF graves.

131 For example in Acle, Aylsham, Bale, Bawdeswell, Belaugh, Bintree, Blickling, Brancaster, Costessey, Ditchingham, Fakenham, Helhoughton, Holt, Horsham St Faith, Letheringsett, Mattishall, North Walsham, Reepham, Swanton Morley, Thursford, West Beckham, or Weybourne. As in Lincolnshire, there seems to be no particular link between redundant/abandoned churches and rural cemeteries.

132 Examples include Burwell, Exning, Fen Ditton, Great Shelford, Ickleton, Meldreth, Milton, Needingworth, Sawston, Soham, Stapleford, Steeple Bumpstead, Swaffham Bulbeck and Trumpington.

133 For example Bere Regis, Buckland Newton, Cerne Abbas, Charminster, East Coker, Easton, Lyme Regis, Moreton, Portesham, Sturminster Newton and Wootton Fitzpaine.

134 Berkeley, Dursley, Kingshill, Kingswood, Leighterton, Leonard Stanley, Thornbury and Wootton-under–Edge among others.

135 For further analysis of denominational situation see Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems. Statistical analysis of Leicestershire and Rutland settlements and burial sites indicates that landownership concentration (‘open’–‘closed’ village structure) has influenced rural cemetery provision in comparable ways as it did for denominational location: ibid. esp. ch. xi. Concentrated landownership has correlated with low population and Anglican predominance, while ‘open’ villages tended to be larger, and to have faster demographic growth and more Nonconformity. For obvious reasons, larger population sizes and Nonconformity have been major determinants in churchyard closure and rural cemetery provision. Market towns, and/or places with larger populations (taking their populations either in 1851 or today), tended to form cemeteries before smaller settlements. In other words, landownership structures are important (strongly influencing both demography and Nonconformity), yet in effect they are subsumed within and subsequently eclipsed by population size as statistical determinants of cemetery provision.

136 Dispute ‘in consequence of Mr Baker's wilful act in demanding Church bell to be rung in connexion with the interment of his wife – a nonconformist burial’: Willoughby Waterless, papers re churchyard extension, 1903, DE 4313/127; and Willoughby Waterless, vestry minutes, 1904, DE 2024/4.

137 Quotation from St Paul (Galatians v.26) used by the rector at an evening assembly in Sheepy Magna: PCC minutes, 15 Apr. 1920, DE 1621/39/1–4.

138 D. Dymond, ‘God's disputed acre’, this Journal l (1999), 464–97, esp. p. 494.

139 Such emotional ties also attached to other features of the church, such as the font (so often Norman or earlier than the rest of the church), again representative of the whole community and stressing birth and baptism over the centuries. I am grateful to David Dymond for this point.

140 Wordsworth, W., Essay on epitaphs (1810)Google Scholar, cited in Sánchez–Eppler, K., ‘Decomposing: Wordsworth's poetry of epitaph and English burial reform’, Nineteenth-Century Literature xlii (1988), 421Google Scholar; Fosso, K., Buried communities: Wordsworth and the bonds of mourning, Albany, NY 2004, 149Google Scholar.

141 Cadogan, G., ‘An elegy to English country churchyards’, Financial Times, 25 Mar. 1989, 15Google Scholar.

142 Iron railings used to be much more common in churchyards; many were removed during the Second World War. The utilitarian, armament-manufacturing reasons for removal can be seen to have a symbolic social meaning too. During that war, their original justification – the defence of the dead and the status of the related living – came to have much wider defensive meaning and justification: the defence of the nation, and all that the dead might have stood for and established in the British past. The understanding seems to have been that the accoutrements of the dead were being put to uses of which they would have approved, and which took a higher priority than class status, while also contributing to minimising further British dead. For an example of wartime removal of iron railings see Rothley, 24 June 1941, DE 4464/20/12.