Woman's funeral is wrecked by too-small burial hole

A grieving Huntingdon family have told how they couldn’t bury their mother at her funeral – because the grave was too small. They say it was the final traumatic blunder in a catalogue of errors leading up to the funeral of 62-year-old Maureen Shelton. The Shelton family have complained to the Huntingdon branch of Anglia Co-operative Funerals about the service they received and they have reported them to Trading Standards. They have also instructed a legal team to help them resolve their issues.

Mrs Shelton’s daughter, Katrina Shelton, 37, has told how the undertakers left her mother’s body at Hinchingbrooke Hospital for a week before taking her to the funeral home, broke a handle off her coffin, used a faulty CD player at the funeral service which left mourners listening to a “high-pitched whine” and tried to force her mother’s coffin into the grave, which was too small, causing the lid to loosen



Miss Shelton said: “They shouldn’t get away with it. I just want something done. It’s breaking my heart knowing that we didn’t give her a good send off. I’m having counselling – I keep having nightmares that my mum falls out of the coffin and is lying on the ground. We don’t how she is resting in her coffin. We had to drive away with her above ground. The minister was disgusted.”

She added: “I am so angry. They can never bring that day back. I want justice. She can’t stand up for herself now so I am going to do it for her. I want her to be laid at rest. It took a long time for it to sink in that she was in that grave – how could we be sure? We didn’t see her buried. I want to see justice done.”