What do cemeteries do when they run out of plots?

Question

What do cemeteries do when they run out of plots?

Answer 1

Bonfire.

or

They just buy more land and start a new cemetary.

Answer 2

There is also an increasingly possitive view of cremation which allows for above-ground burial in a 1 foot square (or smaller) space. In southern cities at sea level where they can't have underground burials, the little house-like graves you see in pictures of New Orleans hold several bodies and are designed to speed decomposition so that the grave sites are available again in 1-2 years.

Answer 3

Depending on the age of the first burials, they often start again in the earliest part of the cemetery, particularly when the cemetery is adjacent to a church, some churchyards are on, at least, their third reuse !

Edit : It would seem that at least 100 years must elapse before used areas of a cemetery can be reused. Churchyards are at least as old as the church, which can easily be upwards of 800 years old, so are more likely to have had multiple use.

There is some interesting information here :

http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/chp/crg/crgco...

Re-use of graves was traditional in churchyards until the establishment of burial grounds and cemeteries in the nineteenth century, but Victorian sensibilities about the sanctity of burial precluded the exhumation of bodies to allow for further burials. Changing social pressures and the shortage of suitable (and accessible) land for burial now presents us with few options for the continuance of burial in the UK, and re-use of graves is the favoured option of those involved in the provision of burials. The re-use of graves is common in European countries and also in Australia.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-off...

Answer 4

I think they have to close business or buy additional land.

Answer 5

recycle?