In our appositely-titled post Burial of unknown ashes without documentation (26 June 2026), we reviewed Re St. Mary the Virgin Greenham [2026] ECC Oxf 11. The dilemma faced by the PCC was that a cremation urn had been left at Newbury Racecourse following a race meeting and despite extensive efforts by the racecourse, police and crematoria to trace relatives or the owner, no next of kin could be identified. Although the police thought they knew the family, they were said to have denied any link to the urn.

The Daily Telegraph has now reported that the urn wasn’t filled with human ashes  and that it was taken to the races last year as part of an elaborate joke, The burger van, the fake ashes and the burial no one could stop (1 July 2026). The background to Gary Bon­sor – the name on the cremation urn – relevant to L&RUK is that he died in his sleep in 2021 aged 58, and a few family members who wanted to mark his death arranged “the cheapest package, an early morning cremation” a few weeks after his death.

His ashes were not then trans­ferred to an urn, but “scattered in a lake at a park Bonsor had enjoyed walking in. The ashes that were found in the urn at New­bury Race­course are not human at all, but “wood fire ashes and a few mini­ature whiskey bottles as that was his tipple”. As to the future, the Telegraph article states:

“What hap­pens now to the ashes – and the whis­key bottles, if they too have been ‘reverently laid to rest’ – is unclear. The Rev Minter, when The Telegraph approached her, was not keen to divulge. ‘I’m trying hard to man­age the natural curiosity around the situ­ation with the very real demands of parish ministry,’ she said.

A spokes­man for the Diocese of Oxford says that the ashes were presented to the church as genuine human remains and were therefore treated as such. If they are found to be fake, will they be dug up again, or left to feed the grass? “’There are processes for all these things,” the spokes­man says mysteriously. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see’.”

Observations

Whilst L&RUK does not comment on on-going issues, it is pertinent to note:

• The minutes of a meeting of the Parochial Church Council on 14 October 2025 correctly noted “We cannot legally bury without the right paperwork, which we do not have”.[1]
• Paperwork on the cremation may now be accessed from crematorium at which the cremation took place.
• Since the urn, now buried, does not contain human remains, Re Blagdon Cemetery does not apply.
• On the basis of the information available to the Court at the time, a faculty was granted for the interment of the urn containing the ashes place within 28 days from the grant of this faculty [7].
• The place and circumstances of the burial were to be recorded on the churchyard plan.

[1] The Guidebook for The Clergy, General Register Office, (Issued 2012, Last Updated August 2024) list only one exception to the rule that a registrar’s certificate or coroner’s order must be produced before the burial is allowed to take place, (para.9.5 and Appendix U), neither of  which was applicable in this case.