Former colliery at Haydon, near Radstock.

This site was unlike any we’ve looked at.  20 acres, but with a low auction guide price of £45k.  Great access, with a good dual-access track off a B road.  It’s amazingly peaceful.   There was less road noise than at any of the sites I’ve visited.   So initially it seemed promising.

There’s a big central raised area which is fairly flat and grassed, with some shrubs.  The soil is the waste from the coal mining process.  A few trees had sprung up in it, but not a lot – though that could be because it’s been grazed.  Then there were some lovely wooded areas surrounding the grassy bit, all sloping down and some of them bordered by streams.  Lots of footpaths, but in this perimeter area, so not necessarily a problem.

The fatal flaw with this site is that although it ticks the practical boxes it is marred by views of a housing estate, and industrial buildings.   The houses are looking down on the site, making them very hard to screen off with trees; and in any case, tree screening fails to operate in the winter when the leaves drop.

Again, neither myself nor Cittapala who visited with me could say we would want to be buried there.  We couldn’t imagine it having sufficient appeal to others.  Some of us on the team have visited existing natural burial grounds, and none of them had views of nearby houses.   So sadly we had to rule this site out.