Why are there home burials of the dead?

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We all know about home births, but what about deaths at home? It has long been essential for the British aristocracy to bury family members on country estates. Diana, Princess of Wales, was buried in Althorp Park, Northamptonshire, on an island in Oval Lake.

Traditionally, whole bodies were buried in stately homes, although in the case of Sir Henry Norris, who was executed on Tower Hill in 1536, only his head is buried at his family home, Ockwells Manor in Berkshire.

For Shakespeare’s Hamlet, death may have been the great equalizer – “The paths of glory lead only to the grave” – ​​but the large mausoleums of wealthy families suggest otherwise. In an elegantly understated example at Brocklesby Park in Lincolnshire, built by the 1st Baron Yarborough for his late wife Sophia Pelham, she sleeps surrounded by neoclassical sarcophagi and 12 fluted Doric columns.

One would have thought that this kind of noble decadence would have literally died out with the aristocracy – but now the fashion for lavish home burials has been revived, as new money seeks to imitate old, in a kind of postmortem gentrification. Mockney film director Guy Ritchie is building a personal gravesite on his 1,134-acre Wiltshire estate. And singer Ed Sheeran has created an underground resting place in the grounds of his £3.7million Suffolk home. Is this what trying to stay 6 feet under with the Joneses looks like?

For the aristocracy, it makes sense to be buried with your ancestors – although having to spend all of eternity with your relatives feels like the definition of hell. It’s surprising that the same appeal exists for Ritchie, who only bought his estate with Madonna in 2001. Still, Ritchie’s planning agent tells us that his intended tasteful “small private burial ground, surrounded by local greenstone and flint checkerboards, set high on the hillside overlooking the house and estate” is intended to “reinforce the family’s connection to the land.” underline.

Were Ritchie and Sheeran inspired by other high-profile artists? Virginia Woolf’s ashes were buried under an elm tree at Monk’s House in Sussex, with the inscription: “Death is the enemy.” Barbara Cartland, the mother of Diana’s stepmother Raine Spencer, was buried under an oak tree in the grounds of her Italian mansion, Camfield Place . Politician Alan Clark sleeps in the stunning grounds of Saltwood Castle, while Lady Fiona Hindlip, the interior designer and mother of TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp, was buried at the end of her huge Dorset garden next to the grave of the family pony Benji.

Being laid to rest on a large country estate sounds romantic; perhaps less attractive is landing under a postage stamp-sized lawn behind a patio. When a three-bedroom house went up for sale in Leeds for £125,000 in 2021, potential buyers were warned that the previous owner was buried in the garden at his request as he was born and died in the house. How reassuring that someone loved a place so much that they never wanted to leave.

Retiring on a country estate sounds romantic; perhaps less attractive is landing under a postage stamp-sized lawn behind a patio

It’s not that hard to do that. “In principle, home burials are completely legal,” Jenny Greenland, lawyer at BLB Solicitors, informs me. All you need is the consent of the landowner and compliance with Environment Agency and Department of Justice regulations in the UK, e.g. Such as placement of the grave far enough from water sources, a recommended minimum soil depth of 2 feet between the coffin lid and ground level, and someone qualified to perform the ceremony.

The thought of the former owners of my house being buried in the garden makes me squeamish. Would I have to dig my vegetable patch on someone’s grandma? Still, real estate agents don’t seem too worried. Rupert Sweeting, partner at estate agent Knight Frank, remembers selling a farmhouse with a grave three-quarters of a mile from the main house. “Buyers weren’t bothered by it,” he says. But there was one condition: “The previous owner was allowed to visit with reasonable notice.” Houses he sold with family dog ​​graves in the garden “don’t seem to worry buyers,” he adds.

I think it would be nice to buy a house if you knew that instead of skeletons in the closet there were only skeletons in the garden. Still, I wouldn’t do it. “Put your name in hearts, not gravestones,” as a tired Instagram meme once said. Additionally, as Greenland points out, future homeowners can apply for permission to exhume and rebury a body. And that would really be the nail in the coffin.

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