We want to help you as you say goodbye to someone you love. A Christian funeral commits the soul of the person to God’s loving care, and their body to be buried or cremated. Although your funeral director will guide you through many of the complexities, the Church is here to care for you too.

Burial or cremation?
It is up to you, or to the wishes expressed by the person who has died. The Rector will be privileged to conduct a funeral in the church followed either by burial or by cremation, or to conduct a funeral at a Crematorium.

Why a Christian funeral?
God’s love and power extend over all creation. Every life, including our own, is precious to God. Christians have always believed that there is hope in death as in life, and that there is new life in Christ over death.

Even those who share such faith find that there is a real sense of loss at the death of a loved one.  We will each have had our own experiences of their life and death, with different memories and different feelings of love, grief and respect. To acknowledge this at the beginning of the service should help us to use this occasion to express our faith and our feelings as we say farewell, to acknowledge our loss and our sorrow, and to reflect on our own mortality. Those who mourn need support and consolation.

Where is burial (including burial of ashes) possible?
The graveyard is now closed, which means that no new graves can be dug there.  However, we are able to reopen graves to bury husbands with wives etc, and it is often possible to arrange for ashes to be buried in family graves.  However, the plot must be able to be identified reliably, and the agreement of the nearest next of kin of people already buried there is needed for new burials in the plot.

If there is no suitable plot in the graveyard, then burial is likely to be in the Cemetery in Dewey’s Lane, Ludgershall.  The Cemetery is owned and managed by Ludgershall Town Council, whose contact details are at the bottom of their home page.