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A Short History of Funeral Practice

Funeral practices vary not only with culture and religion, but also across time.

Throughout history, burials have been associated with sites of religious significance. As Christianity spread throughout Britain, churches and their surrounding grounds became the main sites for burials. The preferred situation was a burial within the church itself, especially in a dedicated chapel, but this was only possible for the wealthy or those who held a high status within the Church.The next best place was close to the outer wall of the church, preferably on the east side, close to the alter. The south and west sides came next in preference. The north side was often used only for stillborns, bastards and strangers, if they were lucky enough to be granted a plot within the church grounds. Otherwise, these unfortunates were buried on the far side of the churchyard wall, in unconsecrated ground.

During the 18th century, churchyards started to become very crowded, especially in towns and cities. Burial plots became smaller, so the graves were packed closer together, and plots began to be reused, with several coffins being stacked in a single grave. Wealth still had an influence on the standard of the burial plot, with the poor being reduced to paupers graves, where up to twenty bodies shared a single grave, which was kept open until it was full, each body only covered lightly with earth. Eventually, this situation started to pose serious health hazards, and a demand grew for non-church related burial sites (cemeteries). The first English cemetery, the Rosary, was opened in Norwich in 1819.

In 1830, the London Cemetery Company was founded and its first cemetery, Kensal Green, was opened in 1832. This started a fashion for cemetery burial. However, even with the extra burial space provided by the cemeteries, cities could not cope. In 1852, churchyard burials within London were banned, and the demand for further cemeteries led to the opening of Brookwood cemetery near Woking in 1854. This became the solution to London's problems, with a special railway built between Waterloo and Brookwood to transport the dead.

As these cemeteries filled up, there was pressure to find an alternative to burial, and in 1878 the first crematorium was built, not far from Brookwood cemetery, at Woking. The first human cremation took place here in 1885. A gradual trend towards cremation developed, to the present day when cremation is commonplace.

Nowadays, it is usual for the deceased to be removed from their home very soon after death, the only opportunity the family having to be close to the deceased being at a chapel of rest, with many of the friends and relatives never seeing the deceased at all after death. However, it is only within the last generation or two that this has become common. In our grandparents time, it was not unusual for the body to be "laid out" at home and for family and friends to pay their last respects there. This change can, in part, be attributed to the scattering of modern families away from the parental home, so there is less opportunity for "a gathering of the clans" when a death occurs.

Over the same period of time, another major change has been the introduction of the motor car. The sleek modern vehicles have now largely replaced the elaborate horse-drawn hearses or the humbler pony and cart.

Photographs taken from The English Way of Death by Julian Litten

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