Upset over headstones

FACED by a flood of tears and protests, Lewes District Council has put on hold its decision to take down gravestones it deems unsafe in the four graveyards it manages in Lewes.

Earlier this week, council contractors had started levelling gravestones they judged were unsafe in Lewes Cemetery but by Tuesday, in the face of mounting public anger, a moratorium was called, allowing time for people to make their relatives' memorials safe themselves.

By that time 27 memorials had been laid flat, out of 600 checked. There are about 5,000 memorials in all in Lewes.

The exercise had been completed at Seaford Cemetery where 431 headstones were pulled flat.

The Sussex Express has received many calls and letters from outraged visitors to cemeteries.

The breathing space will give next-of-kin the opportunity to contact stonemasons if they feel a gravestone is in danger of toppling over.

On Monday, when protests were at their height, Cllr David Neighbour, cabinet member for the community, defended the council's decision to take immediate action: 'What would have happened if a child was killed while we were waiting to tell someone by letter that something needed to be done to a gravestone?' he said.

Respectful

'We are taking unsafe gravestones down respectfully and, as soon as we find out the next-of-kin, we write to them about it.'

It is the responsibility of relatives to make sure the headstones are properly in place and safe.

None of this argument assuaged the grief of Marie Hayward, who visited the grave of her late husband Frank, former Mayor of Lewes, to find his gravestone overturned.

Said her close neighbour and sister-in-law Margaret Donovan, of Valence Road: 'Why didn't they tell relatives in advance they were unsafe? Marie was horrified and in floods of tears to find the gravestone down.

'Is that all the thanks you get for being Mayor having your grave desecrated?

'The stone had been there 15 years. We didn't know it was loose. Why didn't they put up a notice to that effect?'

The council also has safety responsibilities for the closed churchyards of St Michael's, St John-sub-Castro and All Saints.

The council says that over the last few years a number of children have been injured, and some killed by unstable memorials. But not in the Lewes District.

The warning about unsafe headstones came from the Association of Burial Authorities which recently published 'best practise guidelines' for cemeteries.

The council is now to contact the Guild of Stonemasons expressing concern about the way some modern gravestones are fixed in the ground.

Some have been laid without any concrete base at all.

The memorials were being tested to a force of 50 kilograms, which is the recommended pressure in accordance with German Directive UVV 4.7. There are currently no British standards.

Protests have come from across the district.

Albert Turner of The Lynchets, Lewes, visited Seaford Cemetery and saw several people upset to find the headstones of relatives flattened. One lady was crying as she put flowers on her husband's grave.

'If the council thought these headstones were unsafe, surely the right thing would have been to contact these people as, after all, they paid for the ground and the headstones,' he added.

'The cemetery is not a children's playground. If children had done this, there would have been a public uproar.'

John Broadhurst of Mill Road, Lewes, said the pushing over of 'unstable' headstones was 'an outrageous and unwarranted encroachment upon the sensibilities, religious beliefs and human rights of ordinary decent folk'.

And he added: 'The justification expounded by the council for this self-authorised vandalism is that small children could be injured if a memorial headstone were to be pushed over and fell upon the one doing the pushing or indeed his or her playmate.

'Surely young children should not be wandering round graveyards unaccompanied? Certainly none should be attempting to dislodge headstones, even if they see their elders doing so on official business in the name of Lewes District Council.'