A WANTAGE priest has floated the idea of recycling burial plots to help save space.

Father John Salter, vicar at SS Peter and Paul Church, said the town needed to look to burial alternatives to avoid future cemetery shortages.

His comments came after Wantage Town Council was last month given a 1.25 acre farmer’s wheat field to extend the Chain Hill cemetery and provide space for another 30 years.

Fr Salter said: “We have been burying people in the churchyard for about 1,000 years.

“However, the reason we cannot bury more is because you have elaborate coffin and tombstones.

“It locks up the land."”

He said in many cases the families of those buried had died out themselves.

Fr Salter said: “Historically, the majority of people who would have been buried in churchyards around the parish churches would have been placed straight in the ground or wrapped in a shroud.

“Decomposition would have been fairly rapid.”

The vicar did not suggest removing tombstones from the churchyard but said a new cemetery garden could be created for unmarked burial.

He said families would be given burial spots on a grid system so they could easily find where their loved ones had been buried.

And he said after about 30 years there would be nothing remaining in the grave and the spot could be recycled.

Fr Salter added: “We need to consider burial for the future and this would be one of the possibilities.

“If the culture was changing we would not think of a cemetery as a sea of marble stones, rather a green and peaceful piece of land.

“If we continue to bury as we do we will end up arriving in Newbury as we will be constantly trying to expand.”

Wantage Town Council member Fiona Roper said the idea was not something the council was currently looking at.

She said: “It is not an imminent problem.

“However, perhaps in the future people will be looking at this sort of thing.”

The Chain Hill cemetery, Church of SS Peter and Paul, and Holy Trinity Church, in Carlton Village Road, already have dedicated green areas for cremated remains to be buried.

Burial space in Oxford is set to run out within 10 years and Oxford City Council is now looking for land to bury the dead.

In 2007 Oxford City Council considered reusing graves over a century old.

In 2005, former Oxford West and Abingdon MP Dr Evan Harris suggested ancient graves at St Michael’s Parish Church in Cumnor be dug deeper so new burial could take place on top.