Grieving son goes to visit mum’s grave at St John’s Church Boldre to find it covered in earth from plot next door

THE churchwarden at a New Forest church has apologised after a son visiting his mother’s grave found it covered by a load of earth from a nearby plot.

He had taken his 90-year-old father to the cemetery at St John’s Church in Boldre last Sunday and was horrified to find a “makeshift construction of tarpaulin and metal poles” had been erected over the grave of his mother who died nearly three years ago.

He said: “I was just so shocked. I thought ‘What is going on?’ Then I realised that there was a ton of earth on top of mum’s grave which had been dug out from the plot next to hers. I just couldn’t believe it.

“It is so disrespectful and just downright lazy. I looked at the stuff piled on top of her grave and thought ‘That’s my mother under that.’ I was totally gobsmacked.

“It was so upsetting, as if someone just didn’t care about her at all.”

The man, who does not want to be named, lives within a mile of the cemetery said he stopped his father from seeing the grave: “It would have just flattened him. He would have been devastated.”

He said he told his father the grave was being cleaned, then went to take a closer look at what had happened to his mother’s last resting place.

He said: “it is just sheer laziness to pile all the dirt on the one next door. Why couldn’t they have put it 10 or so feet away? It is just not acceptable. I could have understood it better if my mother’s grave had been a 100-year-old one that families no longer visit. But she only died about three years ago at the age of 90 and we regularly go to visit.

“The pots of flowers we had put on it were just shoved behind the earth, and I don’t know what has happened to the bulbs my wife recently planted on the grave. I supposed they have just been crushed under all that earth.”

The man said he went to see if there was anyone in the church who could explain to him why his mother’s grave had been treated in such a way, but no one was there. “I am speaking out because I don’t want anyone else to have to go through this.

“It was just so upsetting to walk through the cemetery on such a lovely day and then come across that. It is really upsetting me even now. I just cannot understand why anyone would do it. I am now worried about what mum’s grave will look like when the earth is removed.”

Churchwarden Christopher Knox said it is “standard practice” in churchyards and civil cemeteries to put the earth by a neighbouring grave.

He added: “The burial was on Monday morning, so the grave was dug last Friday. It was most unfortunate the grave was visited on Sunday.

“By Monday afternoon, he would not have known that anything had been moved.

“I can only reiterate how sorry we are to have caused such distress which was not in any way intended.”