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Re St Peter and St Paul, Long Compton

Coventry Consistory Court: Samuel Dep Ch, May 2012 Churchyard – garden of remembrance – inscriptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2012

Ruth Arlow
Affiliation:
Barrister, Deputy Chancellor of the Dioceses of Chichester and Norwich
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Abstract

Type
Case Notes
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2012

A faculty had been granted for an additional garden of remembrance and permitting the laying of stones recording names and dates of birth and death. Subsequent emailed requests were made to the deputy chancellor and bishop to amend the faculty to include the inscription of brief words of endearment. That request was not put before the Diocesan Advisory Committee as had been directed. Unaware of the earlier directions, the chancellor had granted a faculty for additional wording on one stone. Further, the incumbent had illegally permitted the laying of another stone with additional wording in difficult pastoral circumstances. That stone contained the use of a nickname. The deputy chancellor observed that although the use of nicknames would ordinarily be inappropriate, they were to be distinguished from names by which someone was known by the community at large. In determining the application for an amendment to the original faculty, the deputy chancellor had regard to the facts that the older garden of remembrance included stones with lengthy inscriptions, that neither garden of remembrance was delineated from surrounding headstones and that the two existing stones in the new garden of remembrance contained additional inscriptions. In the light of these factors, and to mitigate difficult pastoral issues, the amendment to the faculty was granted and a dispensation given for the memorial stone that had been illegally laid. Conditions were imposed as to any additional wording, with permission to seek the consent of the archdeacon or chancellor for alternatives. [Catherine Shelley]