The town cemetery headstone survey

The painstaking task of checking the stability of tombstones in the town cemetery began in the spring of 2004 to ensure that they are safe and unlikely to fall on unsuspecting visitors.

The survey is being undertaken by Bourne Town Council under the Local Authorities Cemetery Order of 1977 after concerns were raised by the Health and Safety Executive that many memorials were in danger of causing accidents, especially to children, and indeed some have already occurred elsewhere. There have been a number of deaths and injuries over the past five years caused by falling headstones, including one at Harrogate in Yorkshire where a six-year-old boy was killed in July 2000.

Each headstone is being carefully assessed, usually by a simple hand test to check for the movement of the memorial although some local authorities, such as Sheffield City Council, are using an instrument called a Topple Tester, a hand-held device which measures the pressure required to cause movement in the headstone up to a maximum of 35 kg. If movement is detected, then burial registers are checked for the present grave owner and a current address, a difficult task because not all cemetery records include this information, but attempts are then made to contact them to provide an opportunity for remedial work to be carried out at their expense. Otherwise, the headstones are laid flat.

Surveys have already caused anger and resentment in some parts of Britain, especially where local authorities have begun laying unstable memorials flat without consulting bereaved families. In October 2003, relatives of 130 people buried at Caldicot Cemetery in Monmouthshire were upset to find that their memorials had been removed as unsafe without notification and many arrived at the cemetery to find that the headstones had been placed flat on the ground without their knowledge or agreement and at Torquay in Devon, contractors appointed by Torbay Council to assess the safety risks were accused of being over zealous after relatives were given only 14 days to make dangerous headstones safe. Elsewhere, yellow warning markers and even brightly coloured plastic covers have been put on dangerous headstones pending the completion of safety work.

Some stones in the town cemetery at Bourne have already been laid flat by maintenance staff when they appeared to become dangerous in years past but the present survey will be far more thorough. The amount of work involved can be assessed by the number of gravestones and although no accurate figure is available, over 10,000 people are buried there and around 70% have a stone memorial, although those erected recently, especially in the new part of the cemetery, will cause no problems because of changing materials and specifications.

It is those stone memorials erected in earlier times, from the opening of the cemetery in 1855 and over the next 100 years, that are most likely to present problems. Graves tend to subside with the years and therefore the heavier memorials, especially those made of stone, soon lean and are in danger of falling. It is these that will be identified by the survey.

The town council appointed a working party to assess the situation last year and it recommended that £10,000 be set aside during the 2004-05 financial year to pay for carrying out remedial work on unstable headstones but after a lengthy debate, councillors decided that relatives who are still alive should foot the bill, otherwise they will be laid flat with the inscriptions uppermost to ensure that visitors can still identity occupants of the burial spaces.

It is debatable whether these surveys are really necessary and, more importantly, whether tombstones should be laid flat because they have caused problems elsewhere. The incidents that have occurred all involve children who most likely had no right to be there in the first place because cemeteries are not playgrounds. I have heard of accidents in which youngsters have been injured swinging from lampposts but no one ever suggested that they should be removed from the streets. A far more acceptable solution would be to keep children out, unless accompanied by an adult who would be responsible for them.

The Health and Safety Executive, which is behind this particular bit of nonsense, has been ridiculed in the past for some of its sillier excesses but once an organisation has been appointed by government to fulfil a role, it will continue to do that even after its sell by date has expired because jobs are at stake and they eventually become more important than the work in hand. There is a further consideration in that the laying flat of ancient tombstones will change the appearance of our graveyards forever and not for the better. Those who come after may well regard it as a form of officially sanctioned vandalism and wonder whatever we were about.

In February 2008, volunteers co-ordinated by Lincolnshire County Council were busy at work in the cemetery, tidying graves and making headstones safe wherever possible, a project that is doing much to improve its appearance.

REVISED SEPTEMBER 2008

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