ABSTRACT
This chapter uses eighteenth-century documentary evidence to inform interviews with some who arranged burial on private land in the 1990s and 2000s. It addresses two related issues; one spatial, the other temporal. Spatially, there are three possible locations for a private grave: the garden immediately near the house, a more remote part of the garden, and elsewhere on one's own estate or on someone else's land. John Horne Tooke, who had forbidden any clergy to visit him, preferring the consolations of Shakespeare in his last days, had his desire for garden burial overruled in favour of churchyard interment. Relatives played an important part, not just in determining whether to respect the deceased's wishes for the burial itself but also, subsequently, whether to move the body or let it remain in situ. An equally commonly cited, and in some cases related, motive is the desire to be buried in a natural setting.
