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Families whose relatives buried in graves at risk from coastal erosion state that indecision on how best to address the issue is creating avoidable anguish about the final resting places of their departed family.

An Impending Danger to Historic Churchyards

The council have singled out three church graveyards in the villages of Happisburgh, Mundesley, and Trimingham as being at risk of being engulfed by the sea in the coming decades.

A recent report on the issue sets out a range of possible actions, from taking no action to disinterring bodies and reburying them in safer locations. Officials maintain it is for the community to decide how to move forward.

“Right now we’re in limbo. It upsets me. My parents intended this to serve as their last home, but it isn’t going to be because of the encroaching sea.”

Projections indicate at least part of one churchyard could be claimed by the waves in the next 80 years, but some locals worry it will happen far earlier. “In my view it’s got under 20 years, if you look at what’s happened in the last 30 years,” a farmer stated.

Troubled by the Past

A local business owner recalled a school trip to the nearby settlement of Eccles, which has largely disappeared into the water, including its church and graveyard.

“You could see human remains,” she said. “Some have this idealized notion that the deceased will just get carried away to the ocean. That is not the case. People will collect remains as souvenirs and go plundering graves in search of treasures. That is completely disrespectful.”

“I’m worried that the same thing that befell at Eccles will occur at Happisburgh and there’ll be skeletons on the beach. I would feel appalled by that.”

A Soldier's Resting Place in Peril

Along the shoreline is situated the grave of a ex-soldier killed while serving abroad. His mother expressed she lost sleep after discovering her son’s grave might one day be relocated.

“It does disturb me to consider this won’t be his lasting home,” she said. “To our family it’s an significant site to visit.”

In her view, new burials should stop but says it is premature to exhume existing graves. “What I would choose for now is to do nothing and closely monitor, but an timely resolution needs to be made when a critical moment has been reached.”

Searching for Solutions and Certainty

An absence of consensus over when and how to handle the problem has left grieving relatives feeling frustrated and worried.

Several families want more coastal protections to delay the inevitable erosion and to permit funerals to continue for now. Others contend the moment for moving graves is drawing near.

“The situation is very emotional,” a family member stated. “The official study was thorough, but now there’s confusion about how it is taken forward. And everybody is washing their hands over who is accountable.”

A coastal manager said the graveyards were owned and managed of the local diocese. “Ultimately it is down to them to decide the direction to take. We are here to assist them through that process with communities.”

He added there was ample time to weigh all the choices. “We are talking many years before it starts to be lost.”

“Currently, there exists no common view on what should happen yet. We need productive community discussions to find the right solutions for each village.”

The prospect of losing the churches and graveyards was labeled one of “immense sorrow for the area,” but church representatives also spoke of a doctrine in resurrection, providing a theological viewpoint on the physical disappearance of sacred ground.