Body to be exhumed after grave mistake

9:10am Monday 21st July 2008

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A MAN’s body has been buried in the grave of a baby – and now it has to be exhumed for a re-burial.

Hereford Diocese has stepped in to sort out the mistake so the baby’s mother can one day be buried with her child.

“We don’t know how the mistake was made and we really regret the upset that this has caused,” said diocesan spokeswoman Anni Holden.

Bernard Jones told the Hereford Times how he found another headstone at St Michael and All Angels Church, Kingstone, where his baby sister Elizabeth Joy was buried nearly 50 years ago “I went there for the funeral of my gran just before Christmas to find my sister’s grave had been dug up, the headstone had been moved and someone else’s grave was there,” said Mr Jones, from Hampton Bishop. That “someone else” was Alan Jones, who died in 2006, aged 67.

The church admitted that a mistake had been made and the Rev Ann Hitchiner, the acting priest-incharge, suggested holding a service to put the baby’s stone back where it should be.

But Bernard Jones, who runs a taxi firm in Hereford, said that his mother, Sally Walker, who now lives in Porthcawl, was very upset because she wanted to one day be buried with her baby daughter.

The protest has prompted the diocese to make arrangements to exhume the body of Alan Jones and move it to a new family grave.

Ms Holden said that would allow Mr Jones’ wife to join him after death and allow Mrs Walker to be buried alongside her daughter.

She said that the baby’s grave had been marked with a rose bowl that was not fixed and may have been moved by children playing in the churchyard or when the grass was cut.