Southwark Plans for Camberwell Old & New Cemeteries.

[Sue]

mynamehere Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> To everyone drawn to this thread: we all die so

> what happens then deserves a public debate in the

> modern light of air pollution climate change in

> perpetuity grave reuse alternative burial public

> open space wilderness and the human condition

> habitat loss

>

>

> I hope I do not have to list eninfinitum

>

> If you choose to trivialise this conversation like

> Donald Trump at this exact moment in time you have

> the power

>

> But might does not make you right

>

> And economically there's the same money to be made

> for funerals in woodlands and meadows and ashes.

> Pomp and ceremony and fetting is what people want

> end game a place to visit can be a woodland.

>

> Every time you breath you you inhale the entirety

> of what came before there's nothing sacred about a

> rectangle of dead ground for 40 years and what

> happens after is as long as endless string

>

> So everyone off your high moral horses. This is a

> polluted overpopulated world. I will be someone's

> ancestor and I'd prefer not to be cursed

>

> This is the same as breaking the unions and zero

> hour contracts

>

> No one at all is winning with the council's plan

> this is pure power and the land is public open

> space so I have the right to an opinion and like

> the overwhelming majority of residents I want new

> ideas and fresh air thinking

There have been numerous threads on here discussing these issues ad nauseam.

Please don't start it all again.

And please don't presume to speak for "the overwhelming majority of residents" unless you have valid statistical data with a sufficiently large sample size to back your statement up.

Which I'm guessing you haven't.

[mynamehere]

Well you guess wrong Sue. Don't read or post on the thread is my advice to you and I'll wager without knowing you don't have anyone you need to be able to look square in the eye in 20 years and say you did your best

[Sue]

OK if I guess wrong, please post the source of your data, thanks.

And I will read and post on whatever threads I like!!!

[dbboy]

In a North London cemetery they are now re-using graves which are 75+ year's old and were permission of the family has been given or no relatives exist. Personally I have no objection to this approach.

[Blanche Cameron]

Attached is our 12 Days of Southwark Burial holidaytime card.

This is what is going on in Camberwell Cemeteries:

ONE TREE HILL:

We are waiting for the Diocese of Southwark to give Southwark Council permission to build an access road {or 'path') on top of graves and to cut down as many as (or more than) 45 trees for 145 graves in Camberwell New Cemetery on One Tree Hill just outside the Nature Reserve.

UNDERHILL ROAD:

We are waiting for the Diocese to give faculty to continue work to create 700 plus burial plots above graves on the Underhill Road side of Camberwell Old Cemetery.

HONOR OAK PARK OLD NURSERY SITE:

Southwark has informed us that they will ask for planning permission in January 2017 for over 1000 burial plots on the three acre Old Nursery Site by Honor Oak Train Park station. The plots will be laid out in a similar configuration to area next to The Rec, disregarding a community consultation that asked that no burial take place on the site.

Blanche Cameron

Friends of Save Southwark Woods Campaign

07731 304 966

[email protected]

http://www.savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk

Twitter: @southwarkwoods

Facebook: Save Southwark Woods

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries was founded as Save Southwark Woods in January 2015 to stop the destruction of the woods and graves of Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries. We are against digging up or mounding over graves - so called 'reclamation' and 'reuse'. We are for making the cemeteries Memorial Park Nature Reserves, like Nunhead or Highgate Cemeteries.

[Blanche Cameron]

Pioneering economic valuation of nature moves ahead in Southwark.

For the first time, Southwark has agreed to assess the monetary value of the natural assets of Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries in East Dulwich and Honor Oak.

Funding for the technical support required to produce an Ecosystem Services Assessment ? an economic valuation - of all zones of the Camberwell Cemeteries - is being made available. This is a step in the right direction from the Council and Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries Save Southwark Woods Campaign welcomes it.

Southwark Council is in the process of cutting down hundreds of trees, and scraping away valuable undergrowth to keep burial in the Borough. At the moment, they are awaiting permission from the Diocese of Southwark to cut down up to 60 trees of the The Glade on One Tree Hill and continue chainsawing the woods on Underhill Road.

The full value of nature can never be reduced to money. But nature?s benefits, such as absorbing flooding, cleaning the air, cooling in summer and so on are services which otherwise Southwark would have to pay for, via additional drainage systems, health care costs and more.

Full information:

http://savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk/valuing-natural-assets-begins/4593478545

Blanche Cameron

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries

Save Southwark Woods Campaign

07731 304 966

[email protected]

[www.savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk]

Twitter: @southwarkwoods

Facebook: Save Southwark Woods

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries was founded as Save Southwark Woods in January 2015 to stop the destruction of the woods and graves of Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries.

We are against digging up or mounding over graves - so called 'reuse' and 'reclamation'.

We are against the destruction of memorials and monuments of the dead.

We are against cutting down trees and undergrowth to provide burial space.

We are for making the cemeteries Memorial Park Nature Reserves, like Nunhead or Highgate Cemeteries.

[edhistory]

Are the agendas and minutes of 2016 meetings available?

[Penguin68]

t the moment, they are awaiting permission from the Diocese of Southwark to cut down up to 60 trees

No they are not. They may be waiting for the Diocese to authorise the building of new paths or roads on consecrated ground, or the removal or alteration of burials on consecrated ground, including mounding and the removal or re-location of memorials (again only in consecrated ground). The Church of England's remit regarding municipal cemeteries only covers those areas which are 'consecrated' (and which would previously have been used for what are no longer called pauper's funerals). Most of the cemeteries' plots are not in 'consecrated' ground. The remit of the Church of England extends only to the extent and availability of consecrated land in municipal cemeteries (hence the need for them to agree new paths and roads which would reduce that availability) and to the treatment of those buried there. The remit of the diocese is much wider as regards church (i.e. parish) lands and burial sites, and that does extend to agreeing the felling of trees of a certain dimension. This remit has been regularly confused by this pressure group for the much more limited remit as regards municipal cemeteries.

And, once again, the Church of England has always supported the re-use of burial grounds, where that is technically possible, so that burials can continue adjacent to their parishes, for the convenience of their parishioners.

[mynamehere]

With respect Penguin and John and whomever else votes "traditional" meaning status quo, not all parishioners and not all churches need or want reused dead earth for temporary interment. There is probably a (possibly vast) majority of newly evolved and evolving thought from every type and age of modern forward thinking and concerned citizen / resident who would actually love to respect and remember their dead in a lush green space on benches under trees ( go wild in imaging paradise)

This is not a fantasy this is a reality that a struggle is playing out as a power and political grab for the last commonly held open space that in 20 years will be seen as insane.

No one but politicians and well heeled and well fed church "leaders" is actually voting for reused graves. Every single complex and hidden on line and tucked into TRA halls at noon on a Thursday, every single consultation ranks lined up dug graves dead last with versions of meadows and tree burials and re-wildings vastly more popular.

Consultations are idiotic and they are not binding so after they are done and the results don't suit some traditional church leaders who sell parishioner votes for the power of a dug grave they are chucked.

Make Southwark do a statistical survey. And make sure that climate change and water and soil and mental health and clean air and overcrowding and school children with nowhere to wander wild; make sure that everyone deeply gets that they could have deep wild AND plaques on trees and dedicated benches and plaques on stepping stones and stones in water features and bridges through wilderness with plaques and all those endless plaques in perpetuity could be sold and the money for everyone including funeral directors would be the same and more.

The value of trees however you cost it is hundreds of millions to billions. Period. The. End. All you can quarrel about is how many zeros after the first 100 million. Truly amazing that people like yourselves actually engage in how big is climate change and but my feeling might be hurt if I don't go into a hole for a few years to rot down until I get tossed out for the next dead body.

If you don't get the dystopian future of baking heat with no respite to which we are headed well you can have fun labelling me or explaining further our desperate need for ticky tacky plastic tiny rectangular graves

[Abe_froeman]

I'm not sure that approach isn't more antagonistic than it is persuasive.

[Blanche Cameron]

We believe the Diocese of Southwark has faculty over felling of trees and disturbing graves on consecrated ground. Please see their letter to the LB of Southwark, link below.

It remains to be seen if the Church will give permission - or faculty - to Southwark to continue cutting down woods, removing memorials, laying roads over graves and burying over the dead in consecrated areas of Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries. They may not.

http://savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk/no-church-permission-for-works/4591833195

Blanche Cameron

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries

Save Southwark Woods Campaign

07731 304 966

[email protected]

[www.savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk]

Twitter: @southwarkwoods

Facebook: Save Southwark Woods

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries was founded as Save Southwark Woods in January 2015 to stop the destruction of the woods and graves of Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries.

We are against digging up or mounding over graves - so called 'reuse' and 'reclamation'.

We are against the destruction of memorials and monuments of the dead.

We are against cutting down trees and undergrowth to provide burial space.

We are for making the cemeteries Memorial Park Nature Reserves, like Nunhead or Highgate Cemeteries.

[edhistory]

Are the agendas and minutes of 2016 meetings available?

[dbboy]

stop posting your junk mail through my door

[dbboy]

How can you be a pressure group when what you oppose is not recognised as legally existing?

[Penguin68]

We believe the Diocese of Southwark has faculty over felling of trees and disturbing graves on consecrated ground. Please see their letter to the LB of Southwark, link below.

The only link is to your interpretation of their letter. It is correct that they have the option of granting a faculty as regards the disturbance, removal or mounding over of graves in consecrated grounds in municipal cemeteries, and it is possible that the removal of trees (over which they don't have a faculty) which were growing through graves (as some were following the woeful lack of care in the past) might, as a consequence, be said to have thus disturbed graves, but the removal of trees, in and of itself, is not covered by the need for any faculty. I suspect that the council might argue that the necessary clearances they undertook of scrub growth and (inter alia) Japanese Knotweed (which would not have required any faculty) was not part of any intended remodelling of the consecrated areas to extend their useful life, even though that may have been, for some graves, an unintended consequence. However I do not know whether the new gate and path on the Underhill Road side has extended into the consecrated area - in which case a faculty would have been required.

I also suspect that were it not for the ill-informed lobbying (I say ill informed because a past post showed that rules solely regarding parish lands were being prayed-in-aid for municipal cemeteries by the lobbying group) the Diocese might have been able to grant necessary faculties more promptly.

Of course the planning etc. rules should be being followed, but involving further imaginary rules makes no sense.

Essentially your group is against using the cemeteries as cemeteries (i.e. places where people are buried, rather than were buried) - a point you have every right to make, but it is a debating point with which many (including the Church of England) would disagree.

[dbboy]

Penguin68 - you have summed it up fantastically.

> "Essentially your group is against using the

> cemeteries as cemeteries (i.e. places where people

> are buried, rather than were buried)"

[Blanche Cameron]

Penguin68 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> The only link is to your interpretation of their

> letter.

I am sorry if you were not able to see the entire letter from the Diocese of Southwark to Rebecca Towers of London Borough of Southwark. We posted it on our website and it should be visible. The reader can draw his or her own conclusions as to the remit of the Diocese of Southwark over the cutting down of trees in consecrated areas of the cemeteries. Southwark feels it needs faculty from the Diocese.

I have reposted the link here.

http://savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk/no-church-permission-for-works/4591833195

Blanche Cameron

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries

Save Southwark Woods Campaign

07731 304 966

[email protected]

[www.savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk]

Twitter: @southwarkwoods

Facebook: Save Southwark Woods

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries was founded as Save Southwark Woods in January 2015 to stop the destruction of the woods and graves of Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries.

We are against digging up or mounding over graves - so called 'reuse' and 'reclamation'.

We are against the destruction of memorials and monuments of the dead.

We are against cutting down trees and undergrowth to provide burial space.

We are for maintaining recreational activities already taking place on cemetery grounds, such as the Recreation Ground and Allotments.

We are for preserving the cemeteries as Memorial Park Nature Reserves, like Nunhead or Highgate Cemeteries.

[edhistory]

Are the agendas and minutes of 2016 meetings available?

[Sally Eva]

I've read the CofE letter. What it says is that works which "go beyond what is clearly identified by the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules as not requiring Faculty approval may require to be approved by the Faculty". It doesn't say these works do go beyond the FJR. It says that works may require a faculty if they go beyond the rules.

I think that is self-evident. If FJR is clearly broken then a Faculty will be needed. If it is not clearly broken then it may not (or it may). Then the church is concerned about public controversy, the best solution to which may be a Faculty hearing because this allows both sides to argue their case.

The writer does not make any judgement either on the need for a Faculty or the outcome of a Faculty hearing.

[Penguin68]

I am afraid, Blanche, that your Southwark Diocese correspondent of 16th February last year is mistaken in his assertion, possibly misled by your group's own confusion between the C of E's rights regarding its own land (via parishes) and that of municipal land. In its own cemeteries it does have rights over tree management (for trees over a certain girth) - but this does not extend to municipal cemeteries. I suspect that since last February the Church's position may have changed regarding its belief about the extent of its rights of granting a faculty in respect of consecrated ground in municipal cemeteries, which are limited to the manner of how existing burials and memorials may be disturbed to facilitate re-use for further burials, and the extent of the land available deemed to be 'consecrated' as a consequence of new roads or paths planned for those areas. The C of E has been generally clear about its (without prejudice) support of re-use as a philosophy of cemetery management.

[Blanche Cameron]

Flooding on Ryedale from Camberwell Old Cemetery

The "stakeholders" were given a report Tuesday 17 January 2017 by Southwark Coucncil's flooding officer John Kissi "Briefing Note: Camberwell Old Cemetery - Area Z Proposed Works - Drainage". Area Z is on Underhill Road, backing on to Ryedale.

We were told that there must be additional testing by the Council to ascertain whether the ground can support the two planned soakaway tanks or that the tanks will even be up to the task of stopping neighborhood flooding. Plans to provide burial plots above the 48,000 graves necessitate the construction of two soakaway tanks - one tank to be constructed on top of graves of Southwark's dead.

Council flood officer John Kissi made the observation that if there is a one-in-hundred-year flood everyone will be flooded. One in hundred year floods seem to come sooner than ever.

Mr Kissi's report stated that further investigation needs to be done before burial is to take place and that test pits must be dug in the winter months to test whether the soil has the strength to hold the soakaway tanks and the 700 plus graves and to test soil's ability to drain the soakaway tanks. Hundreds of trees have been cut down and the Council is not even sure they can bury on site.

Regarding Area D1, One Tree Hill

It was pointed out the council used the same photograph of The Glade for "before" and "after" views - not showing the how it will look when 26 trees are cut down.

Blanche Cameron

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries

Save Southwark Woods Campaign

07731 304 966

[email protected]

[www.savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk]

Twitter: @southwarkwoods

Facebook: Save Southwark Woods

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries was founded as Save Southwark Woods in January 2015 to stop the destruction of the woods and graves of Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries.

We are against digging up or mounding over graves - so called 'reuse' and 'reclamation'.

We are against the destruction of memorials and monuments of the dead.

We are against cutting down trees and undergrowth to provide burial space.

We are for maintaining recreational activities already taking place on cemetery grounds, such as the Recreation Ground and Allotments.

We are for preserving the cemeteries as Memorial Park Nature Reserves, like Nunhead or Highgate Cemeteries.

[Blanche Cameron]

NEWS: Southwark didn't test for flood risk to homes on Ryedale before chopping trees in Camberwell Old Cemetery.

Now they will have to do soil tests before any work resumes. The Catch? Catches. One, the Council has told us they need permission from the Diocese of Southwark to resume work so they can do the testing, and they don't have permission yet. Second, these tests can only take place in the winter and it is almost February. It may have to wait until next year. And finally, we believe they don't have the legal right to bore holes into graves to do the needed tests.

http://savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk/council-hasnt-done-soil-tests/4593517787

Blanche Cameron

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries

Save Southwark Woods Campaign

07731 304 966

[email protected]

[www.savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk]

Twitter: @southwarkwoods

Facebook: Save Southwark Woods

[Blanche Cameron]

Update: Flood Risk on Ryedale from Camberwell Old Cemetery

Camberwell Old Cemetery made the South London Press today. Please see attached article.

Southwark Council stripped the trees behind Ryedale on Underhill Road in February 2016 without putting flood protection measures in place (or even having done the needed tests or designing preventative measures).

We are still awaiting word from the Diocese of Southwark Consistory Court to see if the Council's project on One Tree Hill and on Underhill Road/Ryedale (Area Z) can go ahead.

There are still 10 acres of beautiful cemetery woods left in Camberwell Old Cemetery and Camberwell New Cemetery. Go have a look.

The Council has told us they will put their planning permission application in mid-February for the Old Nursery Site. The site is also called "Area B" and is on the Honor Oak Nature Corridor behind One Tree Hill.

We meet every Tuesday at 7:30PM at the Herne Tavene on Forest Hill Road in East Dulwich.

Blanche Cameron

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries

Save Southwark Woods Campaign

07731 304 966

[email protected]

[www.savesouthwarkwoods.org.uk]

Twitter: @southwarkwoods

Facebook: Save Southwark Woods

Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries was founded as Save Southwark Woods in January 2015 to stop the destruction of the woods and graves of Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries.

We are against digging up or mounding over graves - so called 'reuse' and 'reclamation'.

We are against the destruction of memorials and monuments of the dead.

We are against cutting down trees and undergrowth to provide burial space.

We are for maintaining recreational activities already taking place on cemetery grounds, such as the Recreation Ground and Allotments.

We are for preserving the cemeteries as Memorial Park Nature Reserves, like Nunhead or Highgate Cemeteries.

[Penguin68]

There is no 'flood risk' regarding Camberwell Old Cemetery (on a hill with no water courses) - there is a run-off risk associated with the scrub clearance (and its position on a hill) at times of very high rainfall - which should be mitigated by the new planting coming to more maturity. Locally within the cemetery there has always been a problem of pooling - which is a combination of a clay undersoil and the effect of digging graves. There has been a general problem in SE London of a rising water table (as far less ground water is drawn off for industrial use) - this is not Camberwell Old Cemetery specific, nor, in particular, is it a result of scrub clearance.

The work in the cemetery is still very much in progress (held up, I would suggest, at least in part by the actions of these activists) - so we cannot yet see the planned end-result of the new planting etc which will certainly mitigate the effects of excess water.

Certainly I would like to see more work done on managing water pooling and run-off in the cemetery - but that work would require, for instance, the installation of land drains etc. which is being held up by the protesters and the church failing to give the authority they will eventually give for activity within the consecrated areas - you cannot run effective drainage schemes in only part of the cemetery for instance.

[nxjen]

You have to hand it to SSW for being trailblazers for the "post truth world" and for presenting "alternative facts".