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A judge has given the atheist parents of a ten-month-old girl who died 35 years ago permission to have what’s left of her cremated remains dug up from the consecrated ground she was buried in.

In an extraordinary case in the Church of England’s Consistory Court, the parents of Elizabeth (Lizzie) Hugill pleaded for rarely granted permission for their daughter’s remains to be exhumed.

Lizzie died in December 1982 and was buried in Cheshunt Cemetery the same month.

They have only recently discovered that their daughter was mistakenly buried in consecrated ground which conflicts with their strict atheistic views.

Permission for exhumation from consecrated ground has to be granted by the Consistory Court and is rarely given as Church of England philosophy is that a last resting place should be just that, unless there are exceptional circumstances or a mistake has been made.

In this case though the judge bowed to the non-religious beliefs of the parents and ruled that they were not aware that the plot their daughter was buried in was in consecrated ground, which did not accord with their views on religion.

It was therefore held under church law that there had been a genuine mistake and exhumation should be allowed.

Lzzie’s parents, Mrs Beverley Wilson and her ex-husband, Michael Hugill, were too distressed to arrange the funeral and that was done by Mr Hugill’s parents.

Mrs Wilson has regularly visited the grave, even though she now lives in St Ives and it involves a two-hour round trip.

(Image: Google)

But she had never realised the grave was in consecrated ground until she decided she wanted to make arrangements for her own ashes to be buried with those of Lizzie.

But when enquiries were made in October last year it was revealed that the ground was consecrated.

As a result Mrs Wilson and her ex-husband re-united to make a plea to the Consistory Court for permission for Lizzie’s ashes to be exhumed and re-buried in un-consecrated ground at Ramsey Road Cemetery in St Ives, Cambridgeshire. Mrs Wilson now lives in St Ives.

In their plea they said that had they been aware at the time of Lizzie’s burial and informed that it was to be in consecrated ground and what that meant, they would have chosen an un-consecrated plot elsewhere without hesitation.

Now Consistory Court judge, Lyndsey de Mestre QC, Deputy Chancellor of the Diocese of St Albans has granted their wishes.

She said that under Christian theology and tradition the view was that burial, or interment of cremated remains, was to be seen as the act of committing the mortal remains of the departed into the hands of God and that the Consistory Court had “rigorously upheld” the permanence of Christian Burial.

However, she said that in exceptional circumstances the court could grant pleas for exhumation and that in this case there had been “fundamental mistake as to the arrangements made for the interment of Lizzie’s remains”.

Granting a faculty (permission) for the exhumation, she said that she was concerned about the state the ashes and the wooden coffin they were buried in would be in after 35 years underground, but added that a funeral director who had been approached on the matter considered it “feasible”.

She said that she was led to the conclusion that it was a case of “exceptional circumstances based on a fundamental mistake at the time of the interment”.