RARE consent has been given for a woman who was buried by mistake in the same grave as her sister in Edgewell Cemetery at Prudhoe near Newcastle to be exhumed so that she can be re-buried in the plot beside her sisters grave as originally intended.

The permission has been given by the Church of England’s Consistory Court which normally refuses to give the go-ahead for exhumation on the basis of the Church philosophy that a last resting place should be just that unless there exceptional circumstances or there has been a mistake.

In this case though Judge Simon Wood, Chancellor of the Diocese of Newcastle, said that what had happened was “a mistake pure and simple.”

He said that  when June Steel died in April 2003 her sister, Sylvia, purchased a grave plot in the cemetery for her. She also purchased an adjacent plot for herself as she wanted to be buried beside her sister when her time came.

She did not want to be buried in the same grave as her sister as she held double depth graves “in low regard” said the judge.

Sylvia, who died last year, and who the judge said was a highly organised person left “detailed instructions for her funeral and burial.”

However, by mistake she had left documents relating to the grave of her sister in with the instructions, rather than documents relating to the grave she had bought for herself and the result was that in August she was buried in the same grave as her sister rather than on her own in the adjacent grave.

Ruling that a mistake that entitled him to agree to exhumation had taken place the judge said: “ I am quite satisfied and find that the remains of Sylvia Screen were buried erroneously in her sister’s grave and not in the vacant adjacent plot as she had intended and for which she had made provision. This was a mistake, pure and simple.”