Farmer’s DIY tomb raided for business rates
First long barrow built in UK in 5,000 years is intended as Pagan burial site but officials say it is commercial storage
A FARMER who built the first new long barrow tomb in the UK in more than 5,000 years has been told that he must pay thousands of pounds in business rates on it.
The Valuation Office Agency, a government body, claims that Tim Daw owes £4,500 to £5,000 a year.
Mr Daw created the long barrow on his land in Wiltshire as a burial place for Pagans. Such tombs were common in the early Neolithic period and examples still exist today, but the burial method fell out of use thousands of years ago.
Church graveyards and burial grounds are usually exempt from business rates, as they are seen as places of worship.
However, officials at the agency say that Mr Daw’s long barrow is a commercial storage facility which falls above the rateable value on a business property of £12,000, and he must therefore pay the tax.
Mr Daw, from Devizes, said the decision meant that mourners visiting his tomb would have to “pay to pray”. He also claimed that the agency’s stance discriminated against non-christian forms of worship.
He said: “I got an email from the business valuation office saying they considered my long barrow as a place for storage, like a warehouse you would store car parts in.
“Describing it as ‘storage’ is demeaning to the families whose loved ones are buried here.
“I couldn’t believe it. It’s not right and it should be treated the same as a Christian church. It feels like discrimination. We are being told we must pay to pray. There is one rule for the established Christian religions and another for ancient Pagans.”
Mr Daw decided to create the first new long barrow of modern times as a response to the decline in people wanting traditional Christian burials.
He used conventional stone-working techniques and aligned the tomb so that the sun shines down the central chamber on the Winter Solstice. This makes it a popular place of worship with Druids and Pagans.
Mr Daw said the building, which took nine months to construct, cost him around £200,000.
The long barrow is about 220ft long and 20ft tall and has stone chambers with built-in shelves, called niches, where people can place the ashes of their loved ones.
In all, the tomb has 340 niches, each of which can hold two or three urns for a one-off fee of £1,000. All are now reserved, although only 40 are currently occupied.
Mr Daw makes an average of £1,000 a year from the burial site, but he says he will have to charge visitors more if he is forced to pay £5,000 in business rates every year.
He puts any money he takes in towards the maintenance of the long barrow, and insists that anyone, regardless of their religion, is welcome to visit it.
Mr Daw said: “The long barrow is built like an ancient Druid temple and we’ve had Druids come here to worship. It has also become used for
‘Describing it as storage is demeaning to the families whose loved ones are buried here. It’s not right’
a loose kind of Pagan worship, so I just always assumed it was a place of worship and that was that, like a church.”
Mr Daw said that since being told he must pay rates, he had received a written confirmation from another government agency, the registrar, accepting that the long barrow was indeed a place of worship.
He said he sent this information on to the Valuation Office Agency in the hope of persuading it to relent, but was still waiting for a response.
Mr Daw added: “Getting that confirmation was a bit of light at the end of the tunnel, but until they respond and accept it as a place of worship I’m still really worried.”
A spokesman for the Valuation Office Agency said that they could not comment on specific cases.