Row after council topple test flattens headstones.

Residents of a village are unhappy after a parish council knocked down cemetery headstones for safety reasons.

A topple test inspection found certain stones at Studley Cemetery in Warwickshire to be hazardous, and the memorials were “carefully laid flat to prevent accidents,” according to Studley Parish Council.

Ste Clarke, whose grandmother’s stone had been thrown over, described it as a “horrible sight,” adding, “there were just graves down everywhere.”

The council, which has apologised for any pain caused by the toppling test, plans to conduct a public meeting for impacted families on Friday evening at the village hall.

The council hired an independent competent stonemason earlier this month to conduct a toppling test inspection of the cemetery’s memorials,” the authority stated.

“Some of the headstones were identified as a potential safety risk, and as a result, they were carefully laid flat to prevent accidents.”

The council admitted that past notices were unclear and that the number of damaged memorials “far exceeded” the amount originally anticipated.

A stonemason would be ordered to return to the cemetery and temporarily reinstate the memorials that had been laid down, according to the spokeswoman.

Roy Edwards

Mr Clarke, who manages the local Facebook page, reported that the examination damaged approximately 150 graves.

“All we knew really is they put a notice out stating that there was going to be an inspection nothing else, just an inspection,” the council’s spokesperson told me.

He told BBC CWR that he wanted the parish council to fund any associated costs of resolving difficulties. “They could have gone down there, put some metal rods around the gravestones and cordoned it off,” he told me.

“But instead they pushed them over.”

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