Gravestones check will take three years

LEWES District Council's ill-fated gravestone safety programme is far from over. In fact, it could take three years to complete the job.

The council provoked an outcry recently when it toppled 440 gravestones in Seaford and 20 in Lewes which it deemed unsafe.

The work was carried out because of reports elsewhere in the country that gravestones had become unsafe. Several had toppled on to children.

The council has since decided to restore toppled gravestones at the taxpayers' expense. But the council's cemetery sub-committee on Monday heard that something like 8,000 memorials remained to be tested for safety in the town of Lewes.

And four closed churchyards St Leonard's, St Michael's and Denton in Newhaven, and St Leonard's in Seaford also remained to be tackled.

The meeting heard that such closed churchyards should be considered as high priorities for inspection because they contained the larger memorials and had memorials of a greater age and more chance of suffering deterioration.

Those inspections would be carried out by a structural engineer. The tests would be visual and manual only.

Immediate

The sub-committee also agreed that any memorial considered to present an immediate risk should be made safe with a temporary support or, if that was not possible, by cordoning-off. It should be laid flat only as a last resort.

Cllr Keith Moorhouse said he was pleased that toppling would be a last resort only. And he pointed out that the safety work in some of the closed churchyards would be no easy task.

There were substantial trees disturbing graves in some, he said. They would have to be removed before the memorials could be stabilised. There were also rabbit holes and slippery paths to be considered in any proper risk assessment.

Cllr Julian Peterson said there should be more education of children that churchyards were not playgrounds but places of respect.

And Cllr Rod Crocker said the time had come to employ cemetery superintendents who could spot little problems before they became big ones.