🔗 Share this article

Loved ones of people laid to rest in graves vulnerable to coastal erosion say that indecision over how to tackle the issue is causing them unnecessary distress about the final resting places of their departed family.

An Impending Threat to Historic Churchyards

The council have singled out three burial grounds in the villages of Happisburgh, Mundesley, and Trimingham as being in danger of being swallowed by the ocean in the coming decades.

A newly published study on the situation details a series of possible actions, from doing nothing to disinterring bodies and reburying them in safer sites. Authorities maintain it is for the community to determine how to proceed.

“At the moment we’re in limbo. It upsets me. My parents intended this to be their last home, but it won't be because of the encroaching sea.”

Projections indicate at least part of one graveyard could fall into the sea in the next 80 years, but some locals worry it will happen much sooner. “I think it’s got less than 20 years, if you consider what’s occurred in the last 30 years,” one said.

Troubled by the Ghosts of Eccles

A local business owner remembered a school trip to the nearby village of Eccles, which has almost entirely disappeared into the sea, including its church and graveyard.

“You could see human remains,” she said. “Certain people hold this idealized notion that the deceased will just get carried away to sea. They won’t. People will collect remains as souvenirs and go grave robbing looking for treasures. It’s completely disrespectful.”

“I fear that the same thing that befell at Eccles will happen at Happisburgh and there’ll be skeletons on the shore. I’d be disgusted by that.”

A Paratrooper's Grave in Jeopardy

Along the coast lies the burial plot of a ex-soldier who died while working abroad. His parent said she could not sleep after learning her child's final plot might one day be relocated.

“It truly trouble me to think this won’t be his permanent home,” she said. “For us it’s an important place to go.”

In her view, new interments should cease but says it is too soon to disturb existing graves. “My preference for now is to take no action and closely monitor, but an timely resolution needs to be made when a critical moment has been attained.”

Seeking Answers and Certainty

An absence of agreement over when and how to tackle the challenge has left grieving relatives feeling frustrated and worried.

Several families want additional sea defences to delay the inevitable erosion and to permit burials to proceed for now. Others contend the time for relocation is approaching.

“It is very emotional,” said one relative. “The official study was thorough, but now there’s uncertainty about how it is taken forward. And all parties is washing their hands over who is accountable.”

A coastal manager said the burial sites were under the care of the church authorities. “In the end it is down to them to choose the direction to take. We are here to assist them through that journey with residents.”

It was also stated there was ample time to weigh all the choices. “We are talking many years before it starts to be lost.”

“Currently, there exists no common view on what should be done yet. It requires productive local conversations to discover the appropriate answers for each village.”

The prospect of the loss of the churches and graveyards was described as one of “immense sadness for the local community,” but church representatives also spoke of a doctrine in resurrection, offering a spiritual viewpoint on the physical disappearance of hallowed earth.