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Re St Mary and St David, Kilpeck

Hereford Consistory Court: Kaye Ch, February 2009 Memorial – artistic merit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2009

Ruth Arlow
Affiliation:
Barrister, Deputy Chancellor of the Dioceses of Chichester and Norwich
Will Adam
Affiliation:
Rector of Girton, Ely Diocesan Ecumenical Officer
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Abstract

Type
Case Notes
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2009

The petitioner sought a faculty for the erection of a memorial stone in the churchyard in memory of his partner. The incumbent and PCC, supported by the Archdeacon, objected on the basis that the stone did not comply with the current Churchyard Regulations, was not in keeping with other memorials and would open the floodgates to further unwelcome applications. The Diocesan Advisory Committee supported the petition, stating that the memorial was ‘imaginative and of artistic merit’. In granting the faculty, the chancellor recognised that the floodgates argument was ‘of some weight, but only some’. He noted that the churchyard already had a diversity of headstones and observed that ‘We are all human, all different, and all have different tastes’. He saw no reason why the deceased's unconventional and artistic lifestyle should not be reflected in her memorial. [RA]