Daughters' agony after council RIPS out their mother's gravestone without warning over fears it could 'topple' - and pair find it lying on the ground

Two daughters have told of their despair after their mother's gravestone was ripped out by the council over fears it could 'topple' over.

Sandra Easton and Lynda Waite said their mother's resting place looked like it had been 'vandalised' when they arrived for their monthly visit.

The horrified daughters found the gravestone belonging to their late mother Eileen Cussen lying on the ground at the cemetery in Southampton, Hampshire.

The 'traumatic' experience has left the pair 'reliving the grief' of her death and they have had to fork out £400 to fix it.

Council workers have taken the headstones off 45 graves at Southampton's Fair Oak Cemetery which are deemed to be unsafe due to a 'topple risk'.

A notice left on the gate of the cemetary stated: 'All reasonable attempts are being made to contact grave owners.'

However, Ms Easton said 'no efforts' had been made to contact her or her sister, apart from a post on Fair Oak's Facebook page.

The 60 year old said when she arrived for a monthly visit last week to her parents grave last week, she was horrified to find the headstone lying on the floor.

She said: 'I phoned my sister and my sister came up and I said, "I think they have been vandalised".

'We clean it every month and I can assure you, there has never been any movement and that headstone whatsoever. 

'If there were any movement whatsoever I would have got straight on it and taken it to the stonemason.

'Our parents' graves has been vandalised, along with the other 45 that they have toppled over.'

After contacting the cemetery, Ms Easton said she was informed workers had recently been enrolled in a course where they learned 'the topple test'.

'It's not a little topple either - they rock it backwards and forwards', Ms Easton said.

'They all go on this course, and if they haven't got a topple testing machine, they have to rock the headstone backwards and forwards.

'They go with a vengeance also - [a worker] demonstrated what they did.

'All of them rock them back and fourth, back and fourth, until they manage to get them down.'

Ms Easton described the act as 'cold' and 'callous' and said during the process of repairing the headstone, at a cost of £400, it has since been cracked.

Ms Easton added: 'We thought our parents were lying in peace. Having someone stand up at their grace and rock it backwards and forwards. 

'Quite rightly, this needs to be stopped. All these health and safety laws that people come up with, this isn't health and safety - it's demolition.'

Her sister, Ms Waite, 74, added: 'When I spoke to the lady at the council that is overseeing the health and safety at the cemetery, she told me 'when I started to wobble one, I just couldn't stop'.

'There has been no respect for the families of those laid here.

'We feel like we have relived the grief of the days we laid them both to rest. The experience has brought us right back to the day they both died.'

The pair laid their mother to rest in 2003 and their father, Douglas, in 2013.

Safety checks - such as the topple test - were recently introduced in British cemeteries with the purpose of stopping large memorials from falling on people and killing them.

Home Office rules make clear relatives should be properly informed if their loved ones' graves are disturbed. 

A spokesperson for Fair Oak Parish Council, which runs the cemetery, said: 'I can confirm that a memorial inspection, at which advice notice was given one month prior through onsite notices, took place on 31 October 2023.

'The inspection resulted in 45 memorial stones being deemed unsafe. In accordance with the Council's policy, these were laid down to eliminate topple risk.

'Every reasonable attempt was and continues to be made to contact the owners affected to offer advice on the next steps.'

It comes after 87 headstones were also flattened at Haxby and Wigginton Cemetery, North Yorks, last month. 

Mourners who had loved ones buried at the site said they weren't given enough notice to repair any loose headstones in time. 

Among those buried at the site is Lance Bombardier Matthew Hatton, who died aged 23 while deployed in Afghanistan.

Haxby Town Council said the headstones were laid on the ground because they also failed a 'topple test'. 

Tracey Smith, whose brother's headstone had been pulled down, said: 'It's like an act of vandalism.

'This has caused a lot of heartbreak and upset within the community as this has not been communicated with people who have not been given time to rectify issues.'

Kirsty Richmond said she should have been given earlier warning about the tests and would have wanted to witness the test to her father's gravestone.

She said: 'My dad's was one of those which in our family's opinion was not loose or leaning, we always check when we go. The option of repair has been taken away.'

Lance Bombardier Matthew Hatton, who died aged 23 while deployed in Afghanistan, is also buried at the cemetery, but it's not known if his gravestone was one of those that were laid flat.

LBdr Hatton died in 2009 along with Captain Mark Hale and Rifleman Daniel Wild, who were carrying the wounded soldier to a helicopter landing zone.

Last year, gravestones at three cemeteries in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, which house over 50,000 headstones and memorials in total, were toppled if they were over 18 inches. 

Mourners tending the final resting places of relatives at first believed the plots had been vandalised by yobs. 

But tiny stickers attached to the headstones told the flabbergasted families their memorials had been uprooted and laid on the ground by council workmen.

Pictures shared on social media revealed that any headstone over 18 inches tall was targetted. In some cases, the bases were still in the ground and workmen had wrenched off the plaques, breaking the corners off. 

Scarborough Borough Council bosses were accused of ignoring families, who only found out what had happened when they arrived to lay flowers or read about it on Facebook.

Dawn Jordan, 52, from Scarborough, only learned the headstone commemorating her mother, Bridie Jordan, 61, who died in 2003, sister Karen Jordan, who died aged 36 in 2000, and another loved one buried in the same plot, had been uprooted when she saw the rows of flattened headstones on Facebook.

She said: 'I was gutted. It is not very nice seeing your loved ones' memorial pushed over.

'I just think it's disgusting that they can just push these over without consulting anyone. A lot of people are very upset. There was a row of overturned graves near my family's.'