July 2018 – The Good Funeral Guide

Honour restored at Honor Oak Crematorium

31 July 2018

Fran Hall

1 Comment

Categories: crematoria

Guest post by Louise Winter

Back in April last year, we exposed the condition of the conveniences at Honor Oak Crematorium in South East London – peeling paint, a toilet held together by chewing gum and floors covered in used tissue paper.

Earlier this year, I was delighted to be invited back to Honor Oak to see, not only the newly refurbished conveniences, but the refurbished crematorium as a whole. The chapel, waiting room, memorial rooms and gardens have all been renovated, making the most of a calming light blue and grey colour scheme throughout. There’s even Dyson air blade hand dryers.

Honor Oak is an Italianate crematorium, built in 1939, with a chimney that resembles the cathedral campanile at Venice. It was designed by Borough Architect William Bell and Maurice Webb, son of Sir Aston Webb, whose company had designed the adjoining Camberwell New Cemetery. The crematoria around South East London mostly and unusually have descending catafalques, and Honor Oak is no exception.

Just don’t lean any floral tributes against the base of the catafalque before it descends and the lid meets the floor. I learnt that the hard way.

If it seems too good to be true…. the sad end of the promise of Ecolation

23 July 2018

Fran Hall

5 Comments

Categories: Bastards

Over time, we have received a number of well informed comments on a post written back in February 2017 on Ecolation, the supposedly innovative alternative to cremation.

It became apparent that we, along with many others, had been taken in by a sales pitch for something that wasn’t at all what it seemed.

The slick PR and the glossy website didn’t materialise into anything.

Fortunately, unlike others, the GFG didn’t have any money to invest in the promises that seemed so plausible when we visited the Dublin HQ, so it’s just embarrassment at having been fooled that we’re nursing now, not an empty bank account.

So we would like to say a public thank you and pay tribute to ‘Mary’, who has been indefatigable in her pursuit of the facts and the source of all the additional information which resulted in her latest comment on the blog post yesterday, including an excerpt from an article in The Sunday Times on July 8th, detailing the sorry end of this pipe dream.

We have reprinted Mary’s comment below to save you looking it up.

‘From the Sunday Times, July 8 2018, “Put on ice” :
“… Last month, the High Court Judge Deirdre Murphy ordered that Ecolegacy should be wound up and a liquidator should investigate payments made to Ennis and Brian McKimm, the company’s erstwhile chief operating officer who was formerly bankrupt in Northern Ireland.
Ecolegacy was “brought to its knees … by the mismanagement and intransigence of Tony Ennis” and the potential misappropriation of company funds, said the judge. The ecolation unit in the company’s west Dublin warehouse cost 2.2m euro but is not fit for purpose and is worth about 300,000 euros as spare parts.”
I wonder how they spent 2.2m euro on an “ecolation” unit and how, with no possible product to carry out the process in the manner described in the sci-fi video, the whole thing could ever have ended other than with ecoLegacy on its knees.
And they never even had planning permission to do it on so much as a pork chop.
Deirdre Murphy should be impressed that Anthony Ennis did not follow entirely in the footsteps of Susanne Wiigh-Masak’s footsteps – the high priestess of Promession. She supported the notion of people putting Promession in their wills and several were held in deep freezers for many years after their death while the relatives hoped that the promised imminent arrival of a promator in Sweden would permit them to give their deceased loved ones their wished for disposal method. She campaigned tirelessly for them to remain in freezers rather than be forcibly buried when the Swedish state withdrew the exemption because the promator was not materialising. But, like Mr Ennis, she never came up with the goods.
It seems from this article that Mr Ennis instead focused his energies on wealthy live Americans keen to invest in his “thriving” venture.

Here’s the link to the detailed article.’

Going Green at Brookwood Cemetery

22 July 2018

Fran Hall

2 Comments

Categories: death and funerals, funeral trends, funeral wishes, green funeral, natural burial

It’s been twenty five years since the inspirational Ken West MBE opened the very first natural burial ground at Carlisle cemetery, and here at GFG Towers we felt that this landmark anniversary needed to be acknowledged. Members of the Good Funeral Guild felt so too, and, under gentle pressure from Stephen Laing we have co-opted fellow Guild members Emma Curtis and Sarah Weller to help us organise a celebratory day to commemorate Ken’s achievement at the beautiful, iconic Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey on Sunday September 9th, between 10.00 and 17.00.

Since 1993 when the very first natural burial took place, over 300 sites around the UK have been opened, and countless thousands of people have chosen this gently, environmentally responsible alternative to cremation or traditional burial. Despite this, natural burial lags behind in the statistics, being the choice of only around 1% of the population, which we think is a real shame. We’d love to help raise awareness of natural burial generally, so this celebratory day is a starting point for us. Watch this space for further developments.

In the meantime, the event on Sunday 9th September will be open to everyone to attend, with an opportunity to explore the fabulous historic Brookwood Cemetery as a bonus. The London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company was established in 1852 to provide ‘a great metropolitan cemetery situated in the suburbs, large enough to contain all of London’s dead for ever’, in response to great public concern about the state of London’s cemeteries. Two years later, Brookwood Cemetery was opened and the London Necropolis Railway ran between Waterloo station and two private stations in the cemetery, carrying coffins and mourners directly into the cemetery grounds. Since then, over 240,000 people have been buried here, and the cemetery is a hidden wonder of beautiful landscaping, quietly fading memorials and mausolea, immaculate military cemeteries and gems such as the only Zoroastrian cemetery in Europe and the St. Edward Brotherhood, a small Orthodox Christian monastery.

Set in the heart of Brookwood Cemetery is the natural burial area, Gillian’s Meadow, and it is here that we will be gathering to commemorate the establishment of natural burial as a viable alternative to the existing funeral choices. The Open Day will run from 10.00 until 17.00, and along with the ceremonial tree planting, there will be activities throughout the day to encourage guests to explore incorporating nature and ritual in their end of life decisions.

Death cafe picnics will run alongside rustic crafts, mandala and garland making, story telling,message writing and a ‘Time to Altar Grief’ installation, there will be a book tent where you can browse through all kinds of books on death and funerals, a chance to meet and chat with people working in the funeral industry who can answer any questions you might have, an opportunity to see a grave prepared for a natural burial, and Sound in the Woodland. We will also be offering Forest Bathing walks, allowing the opportunity to learn about the healing benefits of being among trees and nature, in the perfect setting. Bring a picnic and a rug and come and spend the day immersed in the beauty of Brookwood.

It will be a wonderful day, commemorating a hugely important movement inspired a quarter of a century ago by the brave innovation of Ken West and Carlisle City Council. We’ll be inviting all of the UK natural burial site owners and operators to come along and join us in acknowledgement of Ken’s influence, as well as local dignitaries and friends of Brookwood Cemetery. Members of the Good Funeral Guild will be coming along too, and the day will be open to the public to come and be part of.

Oh, and there will be cake. Lots of cake. With a very special centrepiece cake created by Conjurer’s Kitchen.

Details about Going Green at Brookwood can be found on Facebook here.