Campaigners call for cemetery to be protected

The campaigners hope church authorities will maintain the site’s consecrated status, preventing redevelopment

A group of campaigners are highlighting the importance of protecting and restoring a historic burial site in Lancashire.

Calderstones Hospital Cemetery in Whalley was sold two decades ago and plans have been put forward for a crematorium to be built at the site.

Over the last few years, headstones have been controversially removed and a vehicle track laid over what were believed to be former garden of remembrance areas.

Campaigners claim the site had been neglected since the sale and hope the Bishop of Blackburn will maintain the site’s consecrated status, preventing it from being redeveloped.

The Friends Of Calderstones and Brockhall Hospital Cemeteries said many headstones were removed from the cemetery, grass appeared overgrown and two chapels of rest were in varying states of disrepair.

Maria Evans visits her uncle's grave at the site and said she hoped the area would be left as a cemetery

For the proposed crematorium, the hospital cemetery’s consecrated status would need to be changed by the Church of England to allow any future building work.

In a statement, the Bishop of Blackburn, The Right Reverend Philip North, said he would make his final decision in due course "after considering all representations made specifically in relation to the matter of deconsecration”.

Ellen Duperouzel, a former Calderstones Hospital nurse, worked at the site between 1984 to 2019 and still lived nearby.

“These people don’t deserve to have a tar road over their graves. I wrote to the bishop and was really upset about things," she said.

Maria Evans visits the burial plot of her uncle at Calderstones.

"We hope the bishop won’t deconsecrate the ground and they won’t build a crematorium. It would be nice for the cemetery to be left as a cemetery," she said.