Southwark is still proposing burial on the Old Nursery site at Honor Oak Park station – even after 76% of residents surveyed said ‘no burial at all’ on this site.
This is what Southwark are proposing:
Option 2 – 1,000 new burial plots, with headstones (standard), to be dug up in 75 years
Option 3 – 1,000 new burial plots without headstones, meadow, also possibly dug up in 75 years
Option 4 – 1,000 new burial plots, trees/woodland planted over, also possibly dug up in 75 years
The Friends of Camberwell Cemeteries – Save Southwark Woods campaign is against all three proposals.
New burial is a destructive waste of inner city public green space. There is burial space available outside the city and burial on this site is only another short-term sticking plaster.
Southwark has just cut down two acres of woods in Camberwell Old Cemetery for burial plots. They are not after woodland, they are after burial plots.
We are for ‘Option 5’: No burial, make it a 3-acre Nature Reserve without burial.
The Old Nursery site Area B has never been used for burial and we are campaigning for it to be preserved as public green space for nature, not burial.
You only have until 31st October to respond.
Email Southwark today with your view:
tara.kelly@southwark.gov.uk
and copy us in:
savesouthwarkwoods@gmail.com
Whatever your view, please add this statement, if you agree:
“It is utterly irresponsible and wrong for Southwark to make any decision about the Old Nursery site as they are in the middle of a ‘review’ of this out-of-date, environmentally and socially destructive, financially wasteful and hugely unpopular Cemetery Strategy.
We want a full Statutory Consultation on Southwark’s burial policy and cemetery plans, not just a ‘review’.”
Full details of Southwark’s plans for the Old Nursery site Area B are here:
https://www.southwark.gov.uk/parks-and-open-spaces/projects-in-parks/the-future-of-our-cemeteries
Southwark’s own survey on using this 3-acre brownfield site for burial plots shows the vast majority of residents – 76% – totally opposed to using the site for burial plots, asking instead for woods, nature reserves, natural green space, not burial.
Another 17% were unhappy with some aspect of Southwark’s plans for the site.
Only 4% supported Southwark Council’s plans in full.
