I sketch the ‘archaeology of contemporary death’ for a present-day crematorium.
Archaeologists can approach the managed municipally or privately run crematoria – their architectures and grounds – from a host of different perspectives. Beyond considering changes in design and layout of the buildings, the design and use of their different memorial components can be investigated, from lawns to traditional cremation graves and vaults. We can also consider their ‘furniture’ and infrastructures – from paths and roads to rubbish bins.
You can read up more about my perspectives on them in my previous posts about crematoria, but here are the most recent:
- Widnes for the Dissolution
- Waiting for the future cremated dead
- Why study cremation past and present?
- Ashes to ashes, funk to funky? Modern crematoria
As part of an MA Archaeology of Death and Memory field trip just before the pandemic lockdown, I took the students to contrasting crematoria. At Widnes, we saw gardens of remembrance augmenting the Victorian cemetery and a crematoria reusing the cemetery Anglican and Nonconformist chapels. In contrast, at Walton Lea, Warrington, we had an example of a crematorium set up only five years after Widens, in 1964, but able to make use of an expansive garden space, formerly the estate of Lord Daresbury (Grainger 2005: 492). Not only far bigger, the gardens of remembrance have many more options for the disposal and commemoration of the dead, including:
A ‘floral court’ adjacent to the crematorium chapel containing multiple features:
Internal memorial features included:
- a memorial wall;
- a kerb of memorial plaques and flower-holders;
- a columnar columbarium
Outside the crematorium opposite the leafy avenue were further features:
Memorial tablets set in a monumental book
Set beside the main driveway overlooking the garden of remembrance, the names appear in a monumental book, a vertical commemorative presence. This is a feature I’ve seen at multiple crematoria but not at Widnes.
The lawned ‘garden of remembrance’
Here there are no discrete memorials are allowed – the location of disposal and subject commemoration set out via lettered grids.
Four seasonal meadows
As well as borders and benches serving as memorial foci for floral offerings, the lawns are by the season, allowing the annual cycle to be linked to memorialisation. Another distinctive feature is that the meadows abut the wall of the adjacent church with its own burial ground.
Memorial garden
A cruciform memorial garden containing arrangements of low ledgers with flower-holders and arrangements of ‘sanctum’ vaults (this is the only option comparable to what is availabe at Widnes).
Woodland walk
Adjacent to a pond, this wooded part of the crematoria’s grounds is not only where individual trees used as foci for memorialisation. Also, I noticed graffiti on some of the trunks.
The ‘Sweet Dreams Baby Garden’
Between the garden of remembrance (lawns) and the memorial gardens with two lawns and multiple components, including:
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- a gazebo;
- the teddy-bear and play-bricks sculpture: each brick is incribed with the name of a lost infant;
- a memorial wall with multi-coloured bricks, memorial plaques appended to it, one per brick;
- a SANDS memorial sculpture surving as a focus of floral offerings;
- a columnar memorial (I understand these are called ‘barbican’s in some of the literature).
Expression and management
This is not a landscape simply comprised of funerary expression, in stands in contrastIn addition to these individual zones, there are themes cross-cutting their varied vegetal and material dimensions. For instance, memorial benches punctuate the grounds, almosto exclusively in wood but for those in the floral court which are comprised of stone.
There are three further issues I wish to discuss pertaining to management (pre-pandemic lockdown, remember). First, I haven’t paid sufficient attention yet to the spaces set aside for displaying flowers used during funerals. Here is a shot of them from Walton.
Second, the scale and prominent of bins for ‘ritual litter’ – flowers, their wrappings, cards and other materials.
Third, there are the signs which direct and manage the space: these are also a part of our contemporary archaeologies of death.
In short, the archaeology of contemporary death focusing on crematoria and their grounds should encapsulate signs and paths, bins and other furniture, alongside the designed zones for different materialities and spatialities for commemorating the cremated dead.
Grainger, H. 2005. Death Redesigned: British Crematoria: History, Architecture and Landscape. Reading: Spire.
Archaeo𝔡𝔢𝔞𝔱𝔥 
When at an ancient burial monument, I always ask myself “Why this? Why here?”
So while enjoying these blog posts about crematoria, I have been asking myself the same questions.
A quick search in Google tells me that 58% of people want cremation vs 17% burial, the rest don’t know (YouGov 2016) and 79% want their ashes scattered.
And for those that choose memorials, what influences the choice? In an island as densely populated as this, that’s a lot of memorials. Google points me to the Competition and Markets Authority “Funerals Markets Study 2019”. Well, there’s a lot of selling going on.
Just as the well documented Roman memorials illustrate their beliefs and practices (like the picnic at the tomb, pouring wine for the deceased), these crematoria and memorials will be saying something about our society. What will endure from these, and what will they think in the future when they ask “Why this? Why here?”
Why this? A complex historical process of cremating emerging as an option in the late 19th century, becoming more popular and predominant in the post-Second World War period: shifting religious attitudes, economic shifts, medicalisation, municipal control of crematoria, commercialisation of the funeral industry, and a host of other factors have shifting attitudes to the body and mortality. What scholars have yet to fully appreciate is the variability within and between gardens of remembrance, meaning these general ‘whys’ are not fully contending with the variability in cremation disposal and memorialisation. That was the background point I was getting at in this post, sorry if that wasn’t very clear, but it is part of an evolving set of thoughts spread across multiple blog-posts.
Why here? The choices of location of crematoria are actually very interesting and, where possible, carefully thought out – adopting Victorian cemeteries, or newly established sites, sometimes reusing the gardens of country houses. Proximity to major conurbations, good road access and proximity to hospitals are key factors. This seems like it reveals only issues of utility, but it also creates a variable range of aesthetics to crematoria grounds and their buildings that demand further comparative research.
Thanks so much for your insightful question!