New rules mean no access to changing rooms

Priest prepares for service in car park

A priest’s Citroen Picasso became a makeshift changing closet when strict new coronavirus rules put a crematorium’s robing room out-of-bounds. The Rev Colin Johnson, 73, from Minster on the Isle of Sheppey, clambered into his cassock in the car park before conducting the funeral of his motherin-law after changing rooms for clergy were closed.

It is one of a number of new measures introduced at the Garden of England Crematorium, Bobbing, near Sittingbourne following the Government’s lockdown.

The length of funerals has been cut to 15 minutes and the number of mourners restricted. At one stage, undertakers were told only two family members could attend. Coffins now have to be wheeled in, instead of being carried by pallbearers. Mr Johnson said: “I realise certain measures must be implemented in the current coronavirus crisis but some of these seem a little Draconian. I wasn’t expecting to have to clamber into my cassock in the car park.” He could be seen slipping on his surplice and purple stole while his biretta hat was perched on the roof of his car as his wife Lynne waited in the passenger seat.

Mr Johnson said: “It was upsetting enough having to conduct my mother-in-law’s funeral without the embarrassment of getting changed in the open.” His mother-in-law Stella Trowell, a former church officer and fundraiser for Holy Trinity Church, Sheerness, died on March 3 aged 92. She had been in a care home in Dartford. Her granddaughter Clare Solberg and husband Courtney had been hoping to fly to Britain from the USA for the funeral but had to abandon their plans when airlines said they could not guarantee getting the couple back home afterwards. Stephen Wright, managing director of the London Cremation Company which runs the Bobbing site had previously warned undertakers of ‘difficult and unusual times’. Clergy across Kent have been asked to estimate how many vacant cemetery plots there are. A “churchyard capacity survey” has been sent out following an “urgent request” from the government to “establish the capacity our county has for burials and the burial of cremated remains.” Replies must be returned by today (Thursday).

The Rev Colin Johnson