Have you ever visited or driven past the Brookwood cemetery, near Woking?
The place is a vast swath of Surrey countryside of some 2,000 acres. All enclosed behind a continuous perimeter wall as though it were a large country shooting estate.
The cemetery was created, basically, because London and its surrounding areas was running out of burial land, so in 1852, after a Royal Act of Parliament, the land was consecrated.
Brookwood Cemetery was once the largest single burial ground in the world. It’s since lost that title but it’s easily still the largest in the United Kingdom and probably all of Western Europe too.
There are now around 250,000 people buried in Brookwood Cemetery, from all religions and nationalities. Up until 1941, Brookwood even had its own railway station serviced directly from London.
Brookwood has a fascinating history. Read more here
I’m sure there is lots of space and I bet the historical planting, by gardeners from Kew, is amazing but somehow I don’t see myself wanting to end up in somewhere so seemingly impersonal as Brookwood.
Huddled away somewhere
Having lived and breathed the outside life since old enough to crawl I can think of no better place to be buried than right in amongst the beauty of the countryside.
I grew up in the Hampshire countryside and whilst it’s changed enormously since the early sixties, when I was a young boy, my old home is still literally one minute from the freedom of the woods or the open fields.
The parish church, which gave our primary school its name is a fifteen minute walk and when one arrives there it’s as though very little has changed in the last forty years.
I’d be quite happy being interned in the churchyard there.
Raising awareness of natural burials
It’s interesting to see that natural burials will be a feature of a show garden at the upcoming Malvern Spring Show (09-11 May 2013).
Landscape architect, Ann Sharrock, is hoping her show garden at this year’s show will help to raise awareness. The garden is based on a natural burial site she created for the Felix Dennis Estate in Warwickshire.
The garden is the antithesis of manicured cemeteries and contains few hard landscaping features to respect its rural location. Many such sites are designed to return to their natural state over the course of 50 years.
Apparently the UK leads the world in natural burials due to our lack of our unregulated funeral industry.
The rise in popularity of natural burial is wrongly attributed to environmental issues, as Rosie Inman-Cook of the Natural Death Centre explains:
“Most people decide on a natural burial having attended such a service. They love the freedom and slow pace – you don’t have to have a hearse, for example. Some people have chosen to use a VW Camper van and one family even turned up with their grandmother’s coffin in her beloved Renault Clio.
The experience is time rich – there’s no sense of urgency and people can stay as long as they like at the graveside. I’ve visited sites with people who are terminally ill and it’s given them a great sense of relief to see their final resting place whether or not they have religious beliefs”.
I like the idea. What better thought than to think ones final resting place is somewhere where one would have loved to have visited during the happier or more thoughtful times of life.
A stuffy crowded cemetery would only remind me of being in a packed doctors surgery waiting for my exit pass.
I’d love to shun the traditional hearse with silk lined hardwood coffin in favour of a trailer pulled by an 1964 David Brown tractor and recycled newspaper biodegradable cask: or maybe one made from a another sustainable source such as willow.
I have just read about Rodney’s funeral…sounds ideal.
More here:
After starting my garden maintenance and landscaping business in 1984 and running it for 21 years I decided I needed a change of direction (probably a mid life crisis, no seriously! :-0) Together with my family, wife Donna, Son Henry and Daughter Fleur (not forgetting Hector the Black Labrador) I moved to France in search of an old farmhouse to renovate. In the interim period whilst waiting for the contract to go through I started writing a blog. Initially just to keep a diary for family and friends to keep up with our progress if they wished but then it occurred to me that there isn’t a real time watcher of the landscape industry in the UK. I didn’t want to waste my experience and experiences so I decided I could put all of this Juice to good use so I started Landscape Juice.
Source: Landscape Juice – Eco Burials to Feature at Malvern Spring Show
