Reordering

The Rector and churchwardens petitioned for a faculty permitting the incumbent to authorise modest uncoloured pictures on memorials within the new churchyard extension. The Chancellor granted a faculty subject to the conditions that the pictures authorized: (i) must not occupy more than one third of the face of the stone and must be uncoloured; (ii) must reflect the life of the deceased; (iii) must not be inconsistent with Christian theology and doctrine; and (iv) must not be of a subject-matter which is transitory in nature. A factor in the Chancellor's decision was that the churchyard extension was visually screened from the main churchyard by a large blackthorn hedge.

In 2008, a faculty had been granted for the demolition of a building in the churchyard and the construction of an extension to the church, which had necessitated the exhumation of 154 sets of skeletal remains (the ‘Fewston Assemblage’) which were removed from the graveyard during excavations for the erection of the Washburn Heritage Centre. A new petition was presented in 2016, seeking authority to reinter the skeletal remains in the churchyard and the erection of three memorials to record the reinterments. Whilst noting that the petitioners in 2008 should have applied for a Ministry of Justice licence, as the remains had not immediately been reinterred in consecrated ground, the Chancellor granted a faculty for the reinterment of the Fewston Assemblage and the erection of the three proposed memorials.

The Vicar and a churchwarden applied for a faculty to authorise retrospectively the laying flat in the churchyard of 51 memorials which had been found to be unstable in 2015 and also to authorise the laying flat of memorial stones deemed to be unstable by a future inspection. There had been much disquiet locally about the laying flat of so many memorials in 2015, and the Chancellor was concerned that there had not been adequate notification to families who might have been contacted prior to the laying down of the memorials. However, he granted a faculty, subject to a condition that in future no memorial should be laid flat without the express approval of the Archdeacon.