Quantock Road Cemetery has scooped a prize at the National Cemetery of the Year Awards.
The ‘BRAMM Bereaved Community Award’ Silver Prize was presented to Bridgwater Town Council.
This is a new category in the Cemetery of the Year Awards 2023 and is open to all Burial Authorities in the UK. Any Cemetery or Burial Ground who have completed any local initiative which has helped the bereaved in any way within the last 5 years are eligible to enter for this award.
Philip Potts of the Memorial Awareness Board said;
‘There are many enterprising Cemeteries that are willing to make a special effort to help bereaved families and this category was designed to showcase some of the best examples and hopefully inspire other Burial Authorities’
Memory tree
During 2022 Bridgwater Town Council decided to place a Christmas Tree within the chapel at Quantock Road Chapel to enable the public to place a tag on the tree in memory of a loved one, this was open to anyone who had loss someone and not just for people who had loved ones buried within our two cemeteries. From the second week of December the chapel was open Monday to Friday to enable the public to visit; tags, pens etc. were provided. We used Facebook, website, and local Funeral Directors to get the word out. With the support of a local Funeral Director, we were able to open the chapel on Christmas eve and day which proved to be very popular and received great feedback via Facebook comments.
Once Christmas was over, we took the tags and placed them into a time capsule and this was buried by our mayor along with a local Funeral Director within the grounds around the chapel.
Due to the popularity, we made another memorial tree and opened the chapel for Mother’s and Father’s Day this year. Also, we now have a memory book permanently placed in the chapel.
We feel this has been a great help to the bereaved and will be repeating it again this year and for years to come.
David Mears Town Clerk said: ‘We are all extremely pleased to be recognised with this national award, it acknowledges that we go the extra mile to help and support the bereaved’.
The Cemetery of the Year Awards are supported and endorsed by the following leading industry Associations –
- Memorial Awareness Board (MAB)
- Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management (ICCM)
- The Federation of Burial and Cremation Authorities(FBCA)
- The Society of Local Council Clerks (SLCC)
- British Register of Accredited Memorial Masons (BRAMM)
