Quizzes & Puzzles10 mins ago
cemetary
might be a daft question and duno if it fits in here but i'll give it a go.
what happens when a graveyard becomes 'full'? do they find another location to start burying people? If so will england, one day, become a big cemetary?
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No best answer has yet been selected by wooo12. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.I think I have heard that in some countries, because of crowding, cemetery space is limited, and so caskets might be stacked, some are buried on end, some are buried for a few years then dug up and the remains cremated. I tried to google this but had a tough time, and not enough time to answer any better.
It is becoming more of a problem. More and more cities' graveyards are becoming full. There is amove amongst local authorities trying to promote cremation. The trouble is that althought cemeteries are generally neglected those who do tend the graves don't want them disturbed, quite rightly too. But the vast majority of grave are unattended and forgotten. Families can and do reserve plots for family members and they are subsequently buried horizontally on top of each other.
Local authorities do (at the moment) have an obligation to bury on demand but as you (I think) are becoming aware, one day it will have to stop. My local authority is trying its hardest to promote cremation as a way out of overcrowding graveyards.
Have you watched "Poltergeist" recently?
in australia i believe it was (but might be wrong and might be somewhere in europe) they are starting to bury coffins feet first and upright to take up a lot less space, and the materials used are more biodegradable to allow break downs quicker to allow the land to be reused for burial within a couple of hundred years once a few generations pass. The field when full with the graves be used as grazing land for cows and sheep to graze on until the length of time has passed to reuse it as a burial ground again for the next generation of burials. Rather than headstones for each grave a single memorial with the names of all those buried there and the birthdate and deathdate will be situated in a prominant position at the entrance to the field.
The idea is two fold, it provides the local authority the chance to bury more people within less space and recycle that space a century or two down the line, and it is also believed that the breaking down in the soil and feeding the cows is a form of returning your body to mother earth and allowing the cycle of life to carry on!
I think there is a posibility to reuse graves after a certain length of time - my dusty memory says 70 years - when the existing coffins are exhumed and any remains put into a charnel house, a repository for bones.
It's how the gravediggers in Hamlet came to find Yorick's skull (but if the timescale above is right the H could't have known him, well or otherwise)
i live in south birmingham near to brandwood end cemetry. that cemetry is now full so the council have bought some old farm land in kings norton and opened a new cemetry there.
my nan was buried in the old cemetry last week but only because the family had already bought a plot there, they reopened my grandads grave and buried nan with him, and apprently there is room for one more.