Britain's overflowing cemeteries: How to solve a grave problem
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2021
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
There's a looming crisis in the cemeteries of Britain: many of them are running out of space. How have we got here and what can we do about it?
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Guests:
-John Waite, volunteer, Highgate Cemetery.
-Ian Dungavell, Chief Executive, Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust.
-Dr Julie Rugg, Cemetery Research Group, University of York.
-Mohamed Omer, Board Member, Gardens of Peace Muslim Cemetery.
Host: Leona Hameed.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Imagine sweeping through green fields, floating five feet above ground, sun on your face as you slide by on track to your destination. |
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| 1:02.0 | Hi, it's Manvine here. |
| 1:04.0 | This episode is about a looming crisis in the cemeteries of Britain. |
| 1:08.0 | Many of them are running out of space. |
| 1:11.0 | One of the producers from stories of our times, the owner, Hamid, has taken a closer look at the issue. |
| 1:19.0 | You can learn a lot about a society by looking at the way it treats its dead. |
| 1:23.0 | Some London boroughs have no burial space at all. |
| 1:26.0 | So if you die in a central London borough, chances are if you want to find burial space, |
| 1:30.0 | you'll have to travel outside of that borough. |
| 1:32.0 | And in Britain, a crisis is looming, exacerbated by COVID-19. |
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