MOTHERS are heartbroken after toys and ornaments were cleared from their children’s graves.

Keleigh Watson, Jade Salmon and Amy Kennedy all discovered belongings had been removed by council workmen in Carpenders Park Lawn Cemetery.

One mother was forced to search through a bag full of mud and water to find the belongings, while another said it was like burying her son again.

A petition has now been set up calling on Brent Council to change their rules. 

Keleigh Watson, 26, said: “I cannot buy him birthday or Christmas presents.

“It is the only place I can go to be upset, where I can cry and feel close to him.”

Brent Council says graves can only be marked by a small plaque.

But relatives are increasingly confused about the council’s policies because some of the graves have been left untouched.

Ms Watson, from Harrow Weald, said relatives are allowed to decorate graves for up l Turn to page 8 l Continued from front to two years. But her six-week-old son Chase had been buried in the cemetery off Oxhey Lane for just over 18 months.

Cemetery authorities are banning items from being placed on graves to prevent the cemetery from appearing cluttered.

Ms Watson said: “At no point were we told we could not have anything. I spoke to one of the workers and they said it was in the small-print. But when you are burying a child, you do not go through all the small-print.

“I was crying my eyes out. The bag with my son’s things in it was full of mud and water and two of the ornaments had been broken and they had lost one of his toy cars.

“I cannot buy him birthday presents or Christmas presents. It is the only place I can go to be upset, where I can cry and feel close to him. Two of my children also come to the grave and they know their baby brother is there. It is one thing I can do to keep his memory alive by decorating his grave.

“They have destroyed everything we have done.” 

Jade Salmon’s eighteen-month-old son, Kodee Coombes, has been buried in Carpenders Park Cemetery for seven years. But personal items have been removed in the last week.

Ms Salmon, of Waller Drive in Northwood, said: “They have taken everything away. It seems like it is just Kodee. I don’t know how they feel they have the right to do this.

“We pay for the plot of land. I am devastated. He died on the 28th December. And the toys I had left there had been bought for him on Christmas Day. He had three days playing with them. I don’t know where any of them are.

“It is devastating they think they can treat someone’s family like this.

“I was only 19 when my son died. I did not know anything about burying anyone.”

Amy Kennedy, of Oakdale Road, South Oxhey, had a still-born birth 36 weeks into her pregnancy. Her son Riley was also buried in the cemetery.

She said: “It is desecration.

“It was beautiful. It was nice to just sit there. It is as if I have gone back to burying him. He would only have been a number. Decorating the graves gives him a personality. It is my way of grieving.

“It is heart-breaking.”

Watford Observer:

Cllr Eleanor Southwood, Brent Council’s Cabinet Member responsible for cemeteries, said: “When Brent Council bought the land for Carpenders Park Cemetery several decades ago, one of the terms of the sale was that the cemetery must only specifically be used as a lawn cemetery.

“This means that after a burial takes place, the ground must be returned back to lawn and graves can only be marked with a flat-lying plaque or stone.

“We do our best to make this as clear as possible when graves are purchased and we write to owners and put up signs in the cemetery, before this work of removing items and the relaying of graves to lawn is carried out, to help ensure the situation is handled as delicately as possible.

“Our contractors also retain grave items in the cemetery for a period after they are removed, so that they can be collected by relatives.

“We appreciate that losing a loved one is the most difficult thing for anyone to deal with and we apologise whole-heartedly for any additional distress that this work may have caused.”

To see the petition click here.