Locals are outraged at council plans to build houses at a cemetery after it was revealed there are still bodies buried there, including a baby named Frances Sarah Day who was among 15 people interred in a pauper’s grave between 1873 and 1928.
Despite Tunbridge Wells Borough Council being told to exhume all remains before proceeding with plans to build 20 homes over the former burial site, a Freedom of Information request has revealed only four of the 15 bodies have been found. The council hopes to build 16 houses and four flats on the site, which currently serves as a storage depot within the cemetery walls.
The campaign group Friends of the Tunbridge Wells Cemetery told MailOnline the council is “taking them for fools” over the “immoral” plans to build over the “sacred” graves.
“It’s insulting to be told one thing by the local council only to find out via a Freedom of Information request that the facts are very different,” said campaigner Justin Quinn. “Many of us in the local community are emboldened by the sense that regardless of the questionable moral and legal implications of the development, we don’t like being taken for fools.”
Quinn added: “Our hunch is they are trying to keep it as quiet as possible because they are aware it wouldn’t be a popular if people knew what the situation was.”
The FOI request revealed that only George Langridge, Maria Thomsett, George Cross and George Payne were found and exhumed. That means at least 11 other bodies, including baby Frances, could still be buried beneath the site where the council plans its development.
The council first applied for permission to build 11 homes on the cemetery land back in 2019. The land sits within the cemetery’s walls but is now used as a storage depot for the council’s parks contractor.
Ministry of Justice directions stated the council had to take precautions to exhume all bodies and bury them in the main cemetery. A memorial gravestone was subsequently erected which claimed to have the “reinterred remains” of all 15 paupers.
But with only four bodies exhumed, locals say they are being taken for fools and the gravestone is trying to give the impression “it’s all been dealt with.”
Athanasios Sermbezis is one of those fighting to block the development. His in-laws are buried together in the working part of the cemetery, and both his children and grandchildren were born and raised in the town, making the cemetery a “sacred place.”
“For them to try and hush us and do it so quickly without really providing the evidence that has been cleared,” he explained. “My concern is why they are trying to get planning permission and do this when there are people buried there.”
He added: “We think from a religious point of view, it is immoral to build something on the top of a burial, even if it is an old burial. It is not morally right to build something where there are dead bodies.”
“People might say ‘we don’t care, we need houses’. Yes we need houses but not on top of dead people.”
A council source said the council were given a letter from the Diocese of Rochester, which previously had ecclesiastical responsibility for the cemetery, confirming the ground was not consecrated.
A spokesperson for the council said: “We can confirm that the bodies were exhumed by a specialist exhumation company, the detailed surveys and work took place during autumn 2020 once necessary permissions had been granted.
“The found remains were treated with dignity and reburied in a different part of the cemetery. A memorial was erected with the names of the deceased in the cemetery grounds and all the works were carried out in consultation with the Friends of the Cemetery.
The spokesperson did not address why only four bodies were found when 15 were documented as being buried at the site.
Tunbridge Wells Cemetery was opened in October 1873 by the Tunbridge Wells Town Commissioners to serve local people of all denominations and none. The cemetery, which now covers 26 acres, has been described in guidebooks as one of the most beautiful in England.
The area where the paupers were buried now houses the council’s parks contractor’s storage depot, which the council says is no longer adequate for its use. The authority indicated it would seek planning permission for alternative use of the remaining site after building a new depot.
The revelation has sparked fierce debate about the ethics of building on burial grounds, with campaigners questioning whether proper procedures have been followed. The Friends of the Tunbridge Wells Cemetery continue to press for answers about the missing remains.
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Image Credit:
Older graves and monuments – Photo by Stephen McKay, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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