A judgment dealing with a matter outstanding from Re Holy Trinity Wandsworth [2012], namely, the repositioning of the font and the baptistry screen. Re Duffield discussed. Faculty granted.

The petitioners wished to remove the remaining 19 pews in the church nave and replace them with chairs (of the award-winning 'Theo' design) and to modify and restore the floor to create a single level worship space across the main body of the church. The aim was to permit people to participate in a wider range of worship and other church and community activities. The Victorian Society objected to the removal of the pews, but later withdrew their objection. The Chancellor granted a faculty, finding that there was a clear justification for the proposals in order to meet the need for flexibility in the modern use of the church building.

The petitioners applied for, firstly, a confirmatory faculty in respect of works previously carried out without faculty, including destruction of the pulpit and reuse of the timber to make a new font, and cutting down a mature tree; and, secondly, a faculty to authorise the construction of a prayer room, the re-siting of an 1831 font and the moving of an 1888 font to a baby memorial in the churchyard. The Chancellor granted a faculty for all the items, except that the proposed relocation of the 1888 font to the baby memorial in the churchyard was adjourned generally.

The College sought permission for certain improvements, mainly to the chancel of the chapel, including the permanent retention of seating platforms; the upgrading of the lighting system; the removal of carpet from the majority of the chancel; and the repair of heating grilles to the nave floor. Notwithstanding an objection by the Victrorian Society to the fixing of transparent balustrades to the platforms, in order to prevent falls, the Chancellor decided to grant a faculty for all the works, being satisfied that any harm to the significance of the Chapel as a building of special architectural or historic interest would be relatively minor.

The Court of Arches held that, where a local authority was responsible for a closed churchyard, a parish council had sufficient interest to intervene in faculty proceedings concerning the laying flat of memorials there. Where memorials had been laid flat, the duty on the local authority to maintain the churchyard included an obligation to take into account the safety of memorials and the appearance of the churchyard, but a district council was under no duty to reinstate memorials it had laid flat. (This case is fully reported at [20o9] PTSR 968.)

Iris Dean ("the Deceased"), before her death in 2010, expressed a wish to have her ashes interred in grave A12 in Blackley Cemetery, where her parents, brother and sister were interred. When she died, her husband, who did not wish to be buried in the same grave as his in-laws, purchased grave A136, and had the Deceased ashes interred in it, with a view to his own ashes being interred there in due time. Before he died in 2020, the deceased decided that he did not wish to be cremated, but to be buried with his parents in a churchyard at Droylsden, where his ashes were in fact subsequently interred. The Deceased's daughter now applied for a faculty to exhume her mother's ashes from grave A136 and reinter them in the family grave, A12. The Chancellor determined to treat this as a case of mistake in not burying the Deceased in accordance with her wishes and that it would be unconscionable not to allow the Deceased's ashes to be buried in her chosen final resting place, the family grave.

The subject matter of the petition was a memorial to Tobias Rustat (d. 1694) in the Chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge. The petitioners (the College) wished to remove the memorial from the Chapel, for conservation and retention elsewhere, as they wished to avoid the risk of people worshipping at the Chapel being offended by the memorial, in view of Rustat’s involvement in the slave trade in the late 17th century. There were many objectors to the proposal. The judgment deals with procedural and evidential issues, including refusing the objectors’ application to adjourn the hearing listed for 2-4 February 2022 in order to obtain the expert evidence of a historian, and refusing the petitioners’ application to call an eighth witness.

His Hon. Judge David Hodge was specially appointed by the Bishop of Huntingdon to act as Deputy Chancellor to determine the petition presented by the College, which sought permission to remove from the College Chapel a Grinling Gibbons memorial to Tobias Rustat, who had been a benefactor of the College in the 17th century. The College contended that Rustat's investment in companies connected with the slave trade created a serious obstacle to the Chapel’s ability to provide a credible Christian ministry and witness to the College community and a safe space for secular College functions and events. The Deputy Chancellor refused to grant a faculty. He considered that the removal of the Rustat memorial from the west wall of the Chapel would cause considerable, or notable, harm to the significance of the Chapel as a building of special architectural or historic interest, and he was not satisfied  that a clear and sufficiently convincing justification for the removal of the memorial had been made by the College.

In his judgment in Re Jesus College Cambridge [2022] ECC Ely 2, the Deputy Chancellor dismissed a faculty petition by the College to remove the C17th memorial to Tobias Rustat from the west wall of the Grade I listed College Chapel. The present judgment deals with an application for costs by the parties opponent.  For the detailed reasons set out in the judgment, the Deputy Chancellor refused the application for costs by the parties opponent. There was an overriding principle in relation to costs that parties should not be penalised by an award of costs against them purely because they were unsuccessful, but only if they had acted unreasonably and thereby increased the costs of the litigation. The Chancellor was satisfied that the College had on the whole acted reasonably, and that "any mistakes have tended to work to the benefit of the case advanced by the parties opponent rather than causing them to incur costs unnecessarily."

Faculty granted for exhumation, to allow the cremated remains of the deceased to be placed with the remains of his wife in a family grave in a different churchyard.