Adjacent to, and connected to, the churchyard was an area known as the ‘church garden’. The land had been given to the church in 1960 for the purpose of adding to the churchyard, the deed of gift conforming with the formula set out in section 5 of the Consecration of Churchyards Act 1867. After a long period of disuse, the land was used to create a garden, separated from the churchyard by a hedge. The garden was never consecrated. As well as containing amenities such as a lawn, trees, flower beds, benches and a ‘fairy grotto’, the garden had been the site of various scatterings and interments of cremated remains. No authority had ever been sought for such interments.