Just as house prices vary by region, so too do the rights to a burial plot - from £85 at Mold Cemetery to £2,200 at Highgate Cemetery (see London region). The average plot price nationwide (for those who met our home-made coffin criteria) was £291 (for an average of 72 years). However the price within a cemetery could vary widely too: Southern Cemetery in Manchester's cheapest plot was £190, its most expensive £2,315. Some also charge non-residents either extra or double the price; or, in the case of East Sheen and its associated cemeteries, three times the price.
Remember to insist, if buying burial rights, that ownership is put in the name of the surviving partner, to ensure their eventual right to be buried together.
As well as the plot, there is also the cost of digging the grave and the burial. The range here was from £5, again at Mold Cemetery, to £510 at Highgate Cemetery, with an average of £183. Maintenance was normally either not charged or optional, with prices ranging from £15 per annum to £82 per annum at Woking Cemetery. Woking (see South region) is, incidentally, another example of a cemetery with a pleasantly liberal and enlightened approach to memorials, with virtually any design accepted.
[All the section that followed from the 1993 edition has been cut as it is misleadingly out of date. If you wish, you may place a secure online order for the latest edition of the Natural Death Handbook.]
For further information, please see The Natural Death Handbook, latest edition.
The Natural Death Centre, 6 Blackstock Mews, Blackstock Road, London N4 2BT (Tel. 0871 288 2098).
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