Burial Ground - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition burial-ground

Definition :

Burial ground, includes a vault or other place where a body is buried, Halsbury's Laws of England, Vol. 10, 4th Edn., Para 1187, p. 548.

Burial ground, includes any churchyard, cemetery or other ground, whether consecrated or not, which has been at any time set aside for the purpose of interment, Halsbury's Laws of England, Vol. 10, 4th Edn., Para 1099, p. 817.

Burial ground, includes any churchyard, cemetery or other ground, whether consecrated or not, which has been at any time set apart for the purpose of intermet, Halsbury's Laws of England, Vol. 10, 4th Edn., Para 1226, p. 864.

The Common Law place of burial is the parish churchyard; but the growth of population and sanitary reasons having made additional burial grounds necessary, these began to be provided by companies specially authorized thereto by local (English) Acts of Parliaments, and in 1847 the Cemeteries Clauses Act (10 & 11 Vict. c. 65), consolidated the provisions usually contained in the local Acts, which thenceforward usually, though not necessarily, incorporated that Act.

In 1852 an adoptive Burial Act (15 & 16 Vict. c. 85), enabled elective 'burial boards' of metropolitan parishes to acquire land for burial grounds, and this Act was applied to boroughs and parishes by an Act of 1853 and subsequent Acts, the parish meetings in rural parishes being constituted the sole adopting bodies by s. 7 of the (English) Local Government Act 1894 (56 & 57 Vict. c. 73). The Burial Act, 1880 (43 & 44 Vict. c. 41), allows burial in a churchyard without Church of England rites; and the (English) Burial Act, 1900, (63 & 64 Vict. c. 15), regulates the consecration of burial grounds not being churchyards, and otherwise amends the law affecting such burial-grounds. By the (English) Burial Act, 1906 (6 Edw. 7, c. 44), no consent to the use of grounds for burials is required in respect of a house erected within100 yards of a burial ground after the ground has been once so appropriated. See (English) Open Spaces Act,1907, and as to the rating of burial-grounds, Winstanley v. North Manchester Overseer
s, 1910 AC 7, also Chitty's Statutes, tit. Burial' Baker or Little on the Law of Burial; and CREMATION.

A creditor cannot arrest or detain the body of the deceased debtor. See per Lord Ellenborough in Jones v. Ashburnham, (1804) 4 East 455.