The Church of England has intervened in a row over plans to build a car park and crematorium on a historic graveyard containing the remains of 1,171 former hospital patients.

The cemetery on the grounds of the former Calderstones hospital, in Lancashire’s idyllic Ribble Valley, had been derelict since it was sold by the NHS to a private developer for £5,000 in 2000.

Nearly 500 headstones, including 13 marking the graves of infants who died during the second world war, were removed from the graveyard shortly after it was sold, causing outrage among relatives.

Work on the site, which is thought to be worth more than £2m, was abruptly halted by the developer in January when historians discovered records revealing that the Church of England formally set aside the land for sacred use “in perpetuity” 102 years ago.

The diocese of Blackburn is considering whether to deconsecrate part of the graveyard after a formal request by the developer. The company behind the plans, All Faiths Remembrance Parks, wants to build a multi-faith crematorium and car park.

But campaigners are calling on the bishop of Blackburn, Julian Henderson, to prevent what they call the “desecration” of the graves and instead plant a garden of remembrance on the one-hectare (2.7-acre) site.

The developer said it would open an “electronic book of remembrance” for the 1,171 patients, who all died at Calderstones former long-stay hospital for people with learning disabilities and were buried between 1915 and the 70s.

The North West Regional Forum, a group for people with disabilities, has appealed to the bishop to block the plans. In February, 250 delegates at its annual conference chanted: “Let our friends rest in peace.”

Sandra McArdle, who was born in Liverpool and now lives in Australia, said she was “appalled at the disrepair, the neglect, the desecration”. She has written to Henderson and the Ministry of Justice to call for them to “stop any more graves being disturbed”.



Manchester-born David Brierley-Green, who lives in Arizona, said he made the 5,000-mile journey to tidy his aunt’s grave every year and was appalled by the saga. “All I want is for my aunt to be left in peace together with all the other poor souls buried in this cemetery,” he said.

The future of the cemetery has been a source of local contention for nearly 20 years. After being sold it quickly fell into disrepair. Within two years, a private developer quietly removed almost all the nearly 500 headstones on site, taking away any visible memorial to the patients buried there.

A committed group of volunteers, known as the “the grave detectives”, tracked down official records and managed to relocate the bodies.

As property prices rose in the leafy village of Whalley, ownership of the cemetery changed hands several times for six-figure sums but the site was left virtually abandoned.

The derelict and overgrown graveyard is in stark contrast to the pristine Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery, where 33 former soldiers are buried to remember the nearly 60,000 allied personnel treated at the hospital during the first world war.

Plans for the crematorium were approved by Ribble Valley borough council in 2009 despite opposition from Whalley parish council, locals and relatives of the deceased. “They shouldn’t have put a single spade in consecrated ground,” said Mel Diack, a resident who was awarded an MBE for his community work in 2005.

“I’m not religious but I can’t understand why the power of the church didn’t stop them sooner. It’s a unique cemetery. We hope the bishop will come down on the side of moral issues, the right to remain in peace, against a developer who has gone in with hobnail boots.”

Legal experts believe the dispute may have to be settled by a Church of England consistory court, a rarely used and archaic ecclesiastical court established in the 11th century.

Angela Dunn, the general manager of All Faiths Remembrance Parks, said it was in discussions to ensure all work on the site was legal.

“We want to build a beautiful garden of remembrance around our proposed crematorium with open access for the local community including easy access for disabled persons,” she said.

“This garden will be maintained to the very highest standards and designed to remember the dead of all faiths, both past and present. We do not want to see Calderstones cemetery fall, once again, into disrepair.”

George Duncan, a partner at Charles Russell Speechlys law firm, said: “The legal rules protecting graveyards, and especially consecrated graveyards, may seem dry and legalistic but they exist for good reasons – they are intended to ensure that human remains are treated with respect and that the feelings of relatives are respected.”