Traditional burial faces some grave competition
Maggie Walsh unearths the greener alternative...
Death, in the popular imagination, conjures images of eternal rest. For Surrey builder Simon Ferrar, however, an aunt’s funeral in 2005 turned out to be a great awakening that would lead to a career change. For this lady, it was not the traditional oak coffin, the deeply dug grave, or the supporting burial vault. This was a natural burial, an increasingly popular form of interment that facilitates decomposition and the natural recycling of the body.
“It was a sunny, cold November day,” recalls Simon, from Fetcham, near Leatherhead. “As we gathered around my aunt’s beautiful willow coffin, surrounded by all this stunning Worcestershire countryside, the occasion just hit me.
“I had no real insight into the world of funerals, but there and then, I began to wonder why it was that we had always tended to bury bodies in a particular way. Yet whenever I asked, people would just say: ‘Well, this is how we’ve always done it.’” Time, decided Simon, for a change.
Natural burial grounds open in West Clandon
- A willow coffin costs upwards of around £600. Much of the willow comes from China or Eastern Europe – expect to pay more for the more sustainable option of English willow. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, plain cardboard coffins in a single colour start at roughly £195 and rise to circa £650.
- Natural burial with use of ceremonial hall, based on Clandon Wood Natural Burial Ground – celebrant-led service, wicker coffin, professional pallbearers, plot purchase and interment fees – starts at £5,900
- Lower cost natural burials, based on one at Oakfield Wood, Shamley Green – family-led graveside service, cardboard coffin, family pallbearers, plot purchase and interment fees – start at £3,100.
So, back in Surrey, he began searching for sites where he could open a natural burial ground of his own. Four years after his aunt’s funeral, he finally found what he was looking for 31 acres of disused farmland at West Clandon, near Guildford.
“When I bought the land, it hadn’t been planted for about eight years. It was essentially scrubland,” he explains. “It took a further two and a half years of planning before we finally got the green light to create what is now Clandon Woods.”
Work began in earnest in 2012, during which archaeological investigations revealed evidence of an Early Bronze Age settlement – though no sign of any previous burial sites.
The first funerals were conducted at Clandon later that year. By then almost two decades had passed since the opening of the world’s first natural burial ground, at Carlisle, in 1993.
Spreading across the UK
According to the Good Funeral Guide, there are now around 400 sites in the UK, and with no national organisation to regulate the burgeoning sector, the range of options is great. Local authorities or parish councils provide and run many sites, usually as a corner section of a traditional cemetery.
The rest are privately owned, from small pieces of land set aside by diversifying farmers to large specialist grounds created by enterprising firms that run them more commercially. In between are sites run by individuals, funeral directors, community interest companies or other small concerns.
The only organisation offering a list of natural burial providers in the UK is the Natural Death Centre, and even this is limited to the 70 or so who belong to the Association of Natural Burial Grounds.
Most UK providers are not members of the ANBG. Yet the need for this kind of provision, insists Simon, is pressing.
Against a backdrop of deepening environmental gloom, the search for eco-friendly ways of burying the dead is a challenge not to be ducked. Wooden coffins, for example, are no longer a sustainable proposition.
According to the Berkeley Planning Journal, the US alone uses an annual volume of casketwood equivalent to four million acres of forest – enough for about 4.5m homes.
It's greener
In addition, the traditional embalming and burial/ cremation process releases toxic chemicals into the soil and air: a cremation can unleash the same amount of energy as a car journey of 500 miles.
With natural burials, however, the picture could scarcely be more contrasting.
“It’s probably quicker to list the similarities than the differences between the two processes,” says Simon. “In both, you have a hole with a body in it, and that’s where the comparison ends.
“In a conventional cemetery, for instance, graves can be up to 12ft deep for four burials in the same plot. The grave is shallow at a natural burial site, usually no deeper than 3ft 6in.” The gulf between the two is key. A shallow grave allows for efficient aerobic decomposition, while with deep burials, decomposition is generally anaerobic: organic matter breaks down without oxygen, thereby producing methane – one of the greenhouse gases most responsible for the rapid warming up of the planet.
A lack of embalming – characteristic of green burials – is another huge plus. The procedure delays the initial stages of decomposition, replacing body fluids with preserving chemicals. Doing away with it lets the body decompose naturally, preventing chemicals from leaching into the soil. And then there is the coffin.
With natural burials, this is biodegradable, usually willow or another sustainable material, or even taking the form of a shroud wrapped around the body.
The future?
For Simon, however, the most important difference is that a natural burial ground has a reason to exist quite apart from its role as a cemetery.
“At Clandon, we’ve created a nature reserve with native trees, wildflower meadows and wetlands,” he explains.
“In the 11 years we’ve been going, we’ve recorded around 1000 different varieties of plant and animal species, right from the bottom of the food chain.” As for the detailed modus operandi, each natural burial site is run along its own distinctive lines.
Clandon, for example, is happy to inter ashes, recognising that people may want to be cremated, or that someone may have kept a loved one on the mantelpiece and is now finally ready to bury them.
“We don’t allow scattering, but we will gladly bury ashes at subsoil level where they don’t affect plant life,” says Simon.
Moreover, while permanent headstones are banned at most natural sites, Clandon will allow a simple plaque laid on the ground or a hand-sized carved leaf hung in a tree.
“But you can’t actually plant a tree here,” adds Simon. “If people want to be interred in a woodland area, they choose a plot near the existing trees. Some other sites allow planting, but the trees grow so close together that they have to be heavily managed and may not survive.”
And while many families still choose a funeral director to prepare their loved ones for the final journey, Simon and his team can assist anyone wishing to arrange the funeral themselves.
“On one occasion, a mother started planning her funeral with her two boys while she was in palliative care at a local hospice. She didn’t want a coffin or a traditional funeral, and when she finally passed away, the hospice helped the boys to prepare her.
“They wrapped her in her favourite quilt, tied it with ribbons and covered it with wildflowers.
Then the boys brought her down to Clandon in the family estate car and carried her to her grave. It was a simple, yet exquisite ceremony: a prayer, a poem and some of their mother’s favourite music.”
A gentle end at a sustainable site – a truly fitting combination. For isn’t the whole point of a natural burial ground, muses Simon, the fact that it is gentle to our world?
clandonwood.com (Clandon Wood Natural Burial Ground) goodfuneralguide.co.uk, anbg.co.uk (Association of Natural Burial Grounds)
