Mum slams council over grave demand

A mum has been ordered to remove bark chippings from around her baby’s headstone as they pose a “real danger” to gardeners.

Rosemarie Wordsworth, 44, was visiting late son Lee’s final resting place when she found a sign strapped to his grave.

It said the decorative bark she had laid to smarten up his plot was hazardous for “operatives and members of the public”.

The stunned mum-of-two said: “We thought we’d put bark down as it can’t do any harm. I’m not going to remove the bark as I can’t see the problem. It is upsetting.”

Lee died of an undiagnosed heart condition 21 years ago, aged just eight weeks. Rosemarie, who runs a taxi firm, has lovingly tended to his grave at Penrith Cemetery in Cumbria ever since.

But around five weeks ago the local council attached a note warning decorative stones contained within a wooden border surrounding the headstone had to go. Rosemarie and partner Sharon, 47, replaced them with wood chippings, but that also drew the council’s ire and a second notice soon followed. It stated: “Thank you for complying with our initial request.

“Unfortunately the stones have been replaced with bark chippings and this still does not comply with cemetery regulations, as it poses a real danger to operatives and members of the public when mowing and carrying out their maintenance functions within the cemetery grounds.

“As we are grateful in your attempt to rectify the issue, we will organise to lay turf in the area free of charge when the weather permits. This must then be maintained by you.”

Sharon, a mum-of-one and gran-of-one, described the order as “very disrespectful”. She said: “We did what they asked initially, but it just seems they are being petty now. We are not prepared to move it, but they have said if we don’t they will come in and plant grass in it.”

An Eden District Council spokesman said: “We undertake the management of Penrith Cemetery with a great deal of pride and respect for the families who have their loved ones buried there.

“In the past few months we have been in contact with a small number of families to request that the graveside memorials for their loved ones comply with cemetery regulations, this being for health and safety reasons to assist with the maintenance of the grounds.

“We would like to thank the majority of the people who we have contacted who have complied with our request already. Unfortunately, we sometimes have to place notices on gravesides to requests compliance from relatives when all other means of contacting them directly are exhausted. This is often due to people not notifying us of a change of contact details.

“We always prefer to address this correspondence in the most sympathetic and personal way possible.”

Rosemarie is just the latest in a string of mourners to have fallen foul of “petty” council graveyard bureaucracy. We look at some of the others…

When Joe Grant, 85, lost his beloved wife Blanche to Alzheimer’s after 58 years of marriage, he wanted her final resting place to reflect the devotion they shared. So the former Merchant Navy engineer built a decorative border around her plot which he keeps in pristine condition. In October 2013, a year after he completed the work, Joe, from South Shields, Tyne and Wear, was devastated to be told it had to be ripped up because it breached regulations.

Bosses at Harton Cemetery, run by South Tyneside Council, measured the border at five feet long two feet beyond the maximum. Joe claimed he was unaware of the regulations and refused to alter the plot.

After former mathematician Allan Robinson, 66, lost his battle with cancer, his wife of 44 years Angela, felt the perfect way to honour him would be to include a small sudoku puzzle and equation on his headstone. He was buried at Farndon, near Chester, in May 2012 and his headstone was put up in November. But in October last year, the parish council claimed it was “contrary to guidelines for headstone inscriptions” and must be changed so standards at the graveyard are “kept high for the benefit of all”. His furious family claimed they were prepared to go to court to keep the headstone.

A family was astounded to be told they were not allowed to put up a wooden cross in a graveyard because council chiefs said it was too ugly.

In June 2010, Liz Maggs went to visit the grave of her mother-in-law Rosemary in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where a cross had been erected after she had been recently buried. But when she arrived, the mum-of-two from Bristol, found the cross had been removed by the council because it breached rules on “aesthetics and maintenance”.