Abstract
This article investigates the impact of natural burial on the delivery of ecosystem services (ESs) in urban cemeteries in England that are owned and managed by local authorities. Local authority natural burial sites have received far less attention from researchers than independent sites developed by farmers, charitable trusts, funeral directors and land owners. Here we argue that the local authority hybrid cemeteries that combine natural burial with traditional graves may have a far greater impact in delivering regulatory and cultural ecosystem services than the much larger and frequently more environmentally ambitious natural burial grounds developed by the independent sector. The article presents three case studies of cemeteries, each of which represents a different interpretation of natural burial. Two have retrofitted natural burial into an existing cemetery landscape. The third is a new cemetery where natural burial was included with traditional burial in the original design brief and planning application. The research reveals how natural burial is transforming the traditional cemetery, with its focus on an intensively managed lawn aesthetic, towards a more habitat rich and spatially complex landscape with its own distinctive identity. The research also reveals how natural burial (within the unique constraints of UK burial culture that does not permit the recycling of burial space) is increasing the burial capacity of urban cemeteries by accessing land and grave space that might not be suitable or appropriate for more traditional forms of burial.
Highlights
The natural burial movement began in 1993 in a municipal cemetery in the City of Carlisle in the United Kingdom (Clayden and Dixon, 2007)
In the absence of any centralized records, here we draw on our own survey of UK natural burial sites, completed in 2013 as part of an Economic and Social Research Council funded project, (Clayden et al, 2015) that was updated in June 2016
Lawns may become an unaffordable luxury and even the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), who pioneered the development of the Lawn Cemetery after the First World
Summary
The natural burial movement began in 1993 in a municipal cemetery in the City of Carlisle in the United Kingdom (Clayden and Dixon, 2007). Nature would be the focus of this new cemetery landscape rather than the preservation of individual graves and identities of the deceased In making this provision, West instigated a revolution in UK burial culture that had not been seen since the introduction of cremation in the early part of the 20th Century (Jalland, 1999, Rugg, 2006). In the absence of any centralized records, here we draw on our own survey of UK natural burial sites, completed in 2013 as part of an Economic and Social Research Council funded project, (Clayden et al, 2015) that was updated in June 2016. It currently identifies 268 sites spread across the UK. This is comparable to the estimated 270 burial grounds recorded by the Natural Death Centre (NDC), the organization which manages the Association of Natural Burial Grounds (ANBG) (NDC, 2016)
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