ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the rise of new forms of memorialisation emerging in the UK urban context, focusing particularly on the increasing temporal and spatial separation of the forms of bodily disposal and the rituals associated with the commemoration of the deceased. It is divided into four sections: re-positioning commemoration the wider context of urban memorialisation; traditional and modern forms of disposal and memorialisation; explaining shifts towards 'cenotaphisation'; and bringing the dead back home. The changes represented by the historical sequence encompassing the village churchyard, the Victorian cemetery, the modern crematorium. The recently established wood land burial sites reveals the progressive bifurcation; part temporal, part spatial, of funerary rituals, enactments and processes of memorialisation that were once highly integrated. Burial and commemorative practices from the pre-reformation village churchyard to the woodland burial site and the commemorative bench, through the Victorian cemetery and the twentieth century crematorium, have been charted to suggest an incremental pattern towards cenotaphisation.
