Council rejects transfer of ownership of local churchyard

Warminster Town Councillors have voted against taking over the ownership and maintenance of the churchyard at Christ Church.

The Parochial Church Council (PCC) requested the closure of the churchyard on Weymouth Street in September, and asked the town council to take over its ownership and management last month. A closed churchyard has no space for new graves but existing family plots can still be used where space allows.

At a Full Council meeting on Monday 23rd March, councillors rejected the transfer due to concerns about the lack of information on costs and maintenance requirements.

Warminster Town Council already manages the closed churchyard on Boreham Road, but Town Clerk Tom Dommett said the Weymouth Street site was “a very different proposition” due to more complex maintenance needs.

In a letter, the PCC described the churchyard as in “fair condition.”

Councillor Bill Parks said, “I am not unsympathetic, and I do realise the sensitivities of maintaining churchyards, especially closed churchyards. However, I am somewhat disappointed in the tone of the letter that was presented by the secretary of the PCC to this council.

“The PCC should have at least have given 12 months’ notice to enable budgetary provisions to be made. I have to say, I have got sympathies with the churchyard, but it hasn’t just suddenly become full up, and yet this is the first time, to my knowledge, that they have approached this council.”

Mayor Andrew Cooper, a retired priest, said, “I come at this from different point of view, having run two churches, one with a closed graveyard, one with an open graveyard. And if I can speak freely, when I had these parishes, the administration that went with these graveyards was, in one case, more than half of all of my paperwork, and in one other case, probably 75 per cent of my paperwork. It’s an absolute nightmare. I’m sorry to be so blunt. It’s a complete money pit.

“I may be being uncharitable, but what I read is the PCC is saying, ‘we don’t want it anymore, over to you’ and that’s not right. That’s not the way it’s done at all. The PCC do not have the right to do that. If they wish to formally close the whole graveyard, there are processes in law that they have to go through, I don’t know whether they’ve done that yet.

“By definition, a closed graveyard is going to have very old tombstones, and it was, especially in the Victorian era, very much the convention that it wasn’t just gravestones that are erected, but lots of what we call furniture around graves.

“In time, these break down and collapse and make it much more difficult to cut the grass. They make general maintenance really difficult. In some cases, they start falling back into the graves. I’ve seen it many, many times and the cost of rectifying that is enormous and the paperwork is horrendous.”

Councillors voted unanimously to reject the transfer.