\n<\/p>\n
Families of people buried in graves vulnerable to coastal erosion say indecision over how to tackle the problem is causing them avoidable anguish about the final resting places of their loved ones.<\/p>\n
North Norfolk district council (NNDC) has identified three church graveyards in the villages of Happisburgh, Trimingham, and Mundesley as being at risk of being engulfed by the sea in the coming decades.<\/p>\n
A recent report on the issue sets out a series of options from taking no action to exhuming remains and reburying them in safer locations. The council and the Church of England say it is for local people to decide how to proceed.<\/p>\n
However, a lack of consensus over when and how to tackle the problem has left bereaved families frustrated and anxious.<\/p>\n
Frank Mason, 69, whose parents, Ethel and Fred, are buried in Happisburgh, said: \u201cAt moment we\u2019re in limbo. It upsets me. My parents wanted this to their final resting place, but it isn\u2019t going to be because of the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Projections suggest at least part of the churchyard could fall into the sea in the next 80 years, but Mason fears it will happen much sooner. \u201cI think it\u2019s got less than 20 years, if you look at what\u2019s happened in the last 30 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mason, a Happisburgh farmer like many of his ancestors, said: \u201cI would like to see my parents moved before I pass away. It\u2019s unsettling but no one listens.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>View of the graveyard and the receding coastline from the tower of St Mary the Virgin church, in Happisburgh, Norfolk.<\/span> Photograph: Joshua Bright\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Mason suggested relocating the graves to land beside a water tower \u2013 the highest point in the village \u2013 and thinks the church should pay for the move.<\/p>\n Sarah Greenwood accepts that her grandparents\u2019 graves at Happisburgh will have to be relocated but says the time has not yet come. She argues that the immediacy of the threat has been exaggerated in the local press.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is very emotive \u2013 it made me ill over the summer,\u201d she said. \u201cThe council\u2019s report was really good, but now there\u2019s uncertainty about how it is taken forward. And everybody is washing their hands over who is responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n She wants the council to build more sea defences to slow the inevitable erosion and to allow burials to continue at the graveyards for now.<\/p>\n Greenwood, who runs a packing business, recalled a school trip to the neighbouring village of Eccles, which has almost entirely disappeared into the sea, including its church and graveyard.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could see people\u2019s bones,\u201d she said. \u201cSome have this romantic idea that people\u2019s remains will just get washed out to sea. They won\u2019t. People will take bones as souvenirs and go grave robbing looking for valuables. It\u2019s completely undignified.<\/p>\n \u201cThey will have to be moved \u2013 but not yet. We want soft defences first.\u201d<\/p>\n Mason is also haunted by what happened at Eccles. \u201cI\u2019m worried that the same thing that happened at Eccles will happen at Happisburgh and there\u2019ll be skeletons on the beach. I\u2019d be disgusted by that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Nine miles up the coast at Trimingham lies the grave of the former paratrooper Nicholas Crouch, who was killed in 2010 in Mosul, Iraq, while working as a close protection officer.<\/p>\n His mother, Barbara Crouch, a retired teacher, said she could not sleep after learning that her son\u2019s grave might one day be moved. She added: \u201cIt does disturb me to think this won\u2019t be his permanent resting place. For us it\u2019s an important place to go.\u201d<\/p>\n Each year, on the anniversary of Nicholas\u2019s death, the Crouch family gather at his grave. Crouch believes new burials should stop but says it is too soon to exhume existing graves. She said: \u201cMy preference for now is to do nothing and closely monitor it, but an early decision needs to be made when a tipping point has been reached.\u201d<\/p>\n In the meantime, she said bereaved families should be consulted and a that timetable for decisions set out. \u201cIt ought to be settled, because I was temporarily deeply unsettled by it,\u201d she said. \u201cI hope it doesn\u2019t get lost in the talking. The important thing for me is to get on with it.\u201d<\/p>\n When the tipping point is reached, Crouch says she would favour a mass exhumation. \u201cIt would be more bearable to do it together,\u201d she said. \u201cWe might all want to be there when they break ground but won\u2019t want to ghoulishly watch the whole procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n Rob Goodliffe, a coastal transition manager at NNDC, said the graveyards were owned and managed by the diocese of Norwich. He said: \u201cUltimately it is down to them to decide the direction to take. We are here to help support them through that process with communities.\u201d<\/p>\n He confirmed a range of options were under consideration, including stopping burials and reburying at least parts of the vulnerable churchyards, but said there was time to weigh all the options. \u201cWe are talking decades before it starts to be lost,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Graham Usher, the bishop of Norwich, said: \u201cThere is no common view on what should happen yet. We need good local conversations to the find the right solutions for each community.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the prospect of losing the churches and graveyards was one of \u201cimmense sadness for the local community, but the Christian church believes in resurrection. We believe there is life after death.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Families of people buried in graves vulnerable to coastal erosion say indecision over how to tackle the problem is causing them avoidable anguish about the final resting places of their loved ones. North Norfolk district council (NNDC) has identified three church graveyards in the villages of Happisburgh, Trimingham, and Mundesley as being at risk of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[21571,14907,3047,16539,2932,21572,6779,1162],"class_list":{"0":"post-39937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-anguish","9":"tag-bones","10":"tag-coastal","11":"tag-erosion","12":"tag-families","13":"tag-graves","14":"tag-norfolk","15":"tag-threat"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}