Local Land Owner Offers Community Field For Burial Ground in Pendeen

Local land owner offers community field for burial ground in Pendeen, in response to the community running out of local plots.

The community of Pendeen can take some comfort from an offer to donate land, to the community, to create more burial spaces. The Church graveyard is down to its last 4 spaces and National Church of England policy is not to provide any new cemeteries. Providing graveyards is not a statutory duty of the local authority so, with limited council budgets, Cornwall Council are only investing in larger towns for new burial capacity.

When the lack of burial places was raised by senior members of the churches cemetery committee, Cornwall Councillor, Sue James called a public meeting on 6 October 2015. From then there have been informal conversation between concerned and interested locals and advice taken from Cornwall Council officers. The potential to create a new burial ground is emerging with Terry Davey, from Manor Farm, Pendeen offering land to the community.

Councillor James explained that “Being offered land makes a community cemetery a possibility but there are many Environmental and other hurdles that need to be tackled before it can be known if the land is suitable and whether a change of use application might be possible. People wanting to have the option of being buried in Pendeen, in years to come, will have to be willing to support and assist the project as well as donate funds, to bring this about.”

The land on offer is the field alongside and behind the Centre of Pendeen Community building, also helped by some land donated by Mr Davey.

Mr Davey said “I’m pleased to be able to offer some land if it helps Pendeen families to continue to be buried here. I don’t know whether it will be considered suitable but if it is, some of the field around the Centre of Pendeen can be donated.”

Pendeen’s Deputy Church Warden, Malcolm Earley, said “For some families they have seen generations of their family buried locally in Pendeen and they want to be able to be buried here, when their time comes. We know this is something we are going to have to pull together and sort ourselves, if this is what the community wants.”

Now that the potential location has been made public, Councillor Sue James has offered to support Malcolm Earley in setting up a public meeting to hear local people’s views and ideas. This has been arranged for 6.30 p.m. on Tuesday 26 July, in the field by the Centre of Pendeen.