Residents in Whitchurch are ‘disgusted’ over the state of the town’s Mile Bank cemetery, with one woman claiming she felt like ‘digging up’ her dad and moving him somewhere else.
Complaints include bins not being emptied, wreaths left on graves for weeks and grass cuttings being allowed to blow on to the stones coating them in clippings.
Whitchurch Joint Cemetery Board used to employ one man directly to maintain the site, but said that the work became too much for him as the cemetery expanded so they hired a team of contractors to do the work last year.
Margaret Hewson, Whitchurch resident, said: “The bins are chock-a-block. It’s not a patch on how it was. I felt like digging my dad up and taking him somewhere else. The wreath I’d placed on the grave was buried under grass. The pot had broken and the old wreaths hadn’t been removed.
“It used to be really clean and tidy when one man did it on his own.”
Caroline Duckers, of Queensway, Whitchurch, has six relatives buried at Mile Bank. She said: “It’s disgusting. I was up there for two hours last week scrubbing stones. To see it like that it’s really heart breaking.” She added that she had contacted the clerk of the cemetery board who informed her the site was improving.
Norman Oakley, chairman of the cemetery board, said: “Last year in the spring it was getting too much for the one man. We took on contract people and as the grass is growing very quickly now we’ve decided to up their work.”
He added that the contractors come twice a week at the moment, but the board has asked the contractors to increase their visits which they have agreed to.
