How much does it cost to dig a grave?

St M’s has its own graveyard. It is quite lovely and if I didn’t have a family plot to go into when that time comes, I wouldn’t mind settling there for eternity. Lovely tree-lined avenue, well kept grass and some interesting headstones. Tomorrow, for the first time, I shall be interring someone in said graveyard. It occurred to me that I had no idea who dug the hole. I do my own for ashes, but who does it for full size coffins?

Turns out it is the local Council graveyard who come along with their digging machine to do it. And guess how much they charge? £950!!! Now if I thought some nice muscly gravediggers were getting some of that I wouldn’t mind. But I bet the man with the scoop ain’t getting £950, that’s for sure. Blimey, I’d dig it myself for that.

Headstone inspiration

Found on actual headstones!!!

Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:
Born 1903 – Died 1942
Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down.
It was.

In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:
Here lies an Atheist
All dressed up
And no place to go.

In a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:
Here lies Johnny Yeast.
Pardon me for not rising.

In a Uniontown, Pennsylvania, cemetery:
Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake.
Stepped on the gas instead of the brake.

In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:
Here lays The Kid.
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger
But slow on the draw.

A lawyer’s epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange.
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.

John Penny’s epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:
Reader, if cash thou art in want of any, Dig 6 feet deep; and thou wilt find a Penny.

In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:
On the 22nd of June,
Jonathan Fiddle went out of tune.

Anna Hopewell’s grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont Here lies the body of our Anna – Done to death by a banana.
It wasn’t the fruit that laid her low,
But the skin of the thing that made her go.

On a grave from the 1880’s in Nantucket, Massachusetts:
Under the sod and under the trees,
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there’s only the pod.
Pease shelled out and went to God

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