Anger at damage to grave
A GRIEVING widower has branded damage done to his beloved parents’ gravestone at Runcorn Cemetery as ‘ disgraceful’.
Barry Foster, 76, of Windsor Grove, said one of the mowers used to trim the grass had hit the masonry, twisting it on its plinth and chipping its corner.
Pictures provided by Mr Foster show the headstone turned partly the wrong way and damage along its edge.
The stone has been there since the early 2000s when his father Frank Foster and mother Elsie Foster passed away.
Mr Foster said it had now been twisted about five or six inches.
He contacted the Weekly News after reading about the distraught family of the late Mark Miles, 50, whose coffin was alleged to have been broken by cemetery staff filling in the grave by dropping earth and rocks from a digger after Mr Miles’s funeral.
Mark Miles Jr, 18, had said he had seen a mower being driven close to the headstones and with a lack of ‘care’.
Mr Foster has now complained to the cemetery’s managers at Halton Borough Council, who he said had removed his parents’ stone for repair, but he does not know how long that will take.
He said: “My parents’ stone was moved on the plinth and chipped down the side by one of the mowers.
“It was damaged on August 9, and yesterday it was removed to have it polished.
“It was down one corner.”
Mr Foster, whose wife died earlier this year, added: “Her grave is in the cemetery, I’m still grieving over that and then something like this happens.
“I think it’s a bit disgraceful.
“I think it should be highlighted.
“Those mowers are quite big, that they’re whizzing round on.”
A Halton Borough Council spokeswoman said: “Mr Foster brought the incident to our attention on August 13 and the memorial was inspected by a cemetery officer who concluded that slight damage had been caused during grass cutting.
“Mr Foster was contacted the same day to explain that the damage would be rectified by our contracted stone mason – the memorial is now with the mason for repair – and we apologised to him for any distressed caused.” ●