Move It On Over

Recycling to create space for burials:

A cemetery is offering second-hand graves, with "refurbished" monuments including headstones, obelisks and crosses, to be used again.

Recycled burial plots, complete with the original memorials, still contain the remains of those who died at least 75 years ago - the names of the dead are simply scoured from the monuments to allow new inscriptions.

The City of London cemetery is selling 1,000 such plots advertised as "traditional-style graves" to be "adopted" by families willing to pay £3,000 to lease them for 50 years.

The 200-acre cemetery, built in 1853 by the Victorians in Manor Park, east London, is one of the largest in Europe. But, like cemeteries across the country, it is running out of burial space.

Manor Park is understood to be the first to consider selling memorials with old graves as part of the solution.

The City of London corporation says many graves were dug deep enough to allow for more coffins and re-using the memorials is good conservation.