CHAPTER XXX.
CEMETERIES.
Amongst the many duties that a town surveyor has to perform is sometimes included that of laying out land for a large burial ground or cemetery, and its management after construction. Power is given to all local authorities to become burial authorities by the Public Health Interments Act 1879, and so strongly is the need felt for what is called extramural interment, that the Local Government Board may compel a local authority to provide and maintain cemeteries. Power is also given for the compulsory purchase of land for this purpose (see sections 175, 176, of the Public Health Act 1875), and the cemetery may be placed either within or without the district over which the local authority exercise their jurisdiction, and many other privileges are granted in order to encourage the acquisition of land so far removed from habitations as to make the burial ground as sanitary as the practice of burying human bodies can be made.
Land once consecrated or used for burial cannot afterwards be sold or used for secular purposes, except of course by an Act of Parliament; “footpaths may, however, be provided in a consecrated but disused burial ground, and the ground may be planted, so as in effect, though not nominally, to make it a public garden.”[230]
A cemetery must not be constructed within 200 yards of any dwelling house, without the consent in writing of the owner, lessee, and occupier of such house; but there is no prohibition upon anyone to prevent their building a house close to a cemetery after it has been established.[231]
Chapels may be built in cemeteries for the performance of the burial services, and the grounds may be laid out and embellished as the local authority may deem fit. The cemetery must be enclosed by walls or other sufficient fences or iron railings 8 feet in height; it must be properly sewered and drained, but such drainage must not flow into any “stream, canal, reservoir, aqueduct, pond or watering place.”[232]
Cemeteries are divided into consecrated and unconsecrated portions by bond stones or other suitable marks; a chapel must be built upon the consecrated portion, although it does not seem to be compulsory to do so upon the unconsecrated portion.
The selection of a proper site on sanitary and other grounds for a cemetery is one of the greatest importance, and a town surveyor, or anyone who has this duty to perform, cannot do better than keep the following words of the well-known sanitary engineer Mr. Eassie before him:[233]
“A well-chosen cemetery is one whose soil is dry, close, and yet porous, permitting the rain and its accompanying air to reach a reasonable depth, and so expedite decay. The formation is also well covered with vegetable mould, which assists in neutralising any hurtful emanations, and encourages the growth of shrubs. The subsoil is also of such a kind as to need no under draining, and such as will prevent the water lodging in any grave or vault. It will also stand exposed to the north or north east winds which are dry, and which do not hold the putrefactive gases in solution, like the moist south or south westerly winds.”
“An improperly chosen graveyard may be said to be one where the soil is dense and clayey, and impervious to moisture. It will be insufficiently drained, necessitating the use of planks to walk upon in wet weather. It will be too close to the abodes of the living, too small to permit proper planting, the graves covered, it may be with flat stones which prevent the passage downwards of the air and rain, and surrounded moreover by high walls which exclude the fresh air. The ground will be stony and insufficiently covered with vegetable soil. No natural outfall will exist, and the drainage water must be pumped up, the bare idea of which is horrible. It will be near also to water-bearing strata, or to a reservoir. Long before decomposition has taken place owing to the smallness of the site, and the impossibility of obtaining any more land except at high building prices, the organic matter hidden out of sight will be far too large in proportion to the area.”
Dr. Parsons, in a memorandum prepared by him on the “Sanitary Requirements of Cemeteries” and published by the Local Government Board in their eleventh annual report, says: