Sister’s heartbreak at overgrown Angmering grave

So when Charlotte Puttock visited her brother, Martin Rendell’s grave, at St Margaret’s Church in Angmering, at the end of September, she expected to find a well-tended plot in peaceful, rural surroundings.

Instead, she discovered a burial site overgrown with weeds and ivy.

Mother-of-five Charlotte, 31, of Solway Close, Littlehampton, said: “When Martin died in 1994, my mother decided to buy this patch because it was right by the stream.

“It was beautiful.

“Now it is overrun with ivy.

“It’s awful to look at it. You can see how sad it is. It makes you want to cry.

“I went down there recently to visit him and tidy up ready for his birthday.

“When I got there I was so upset. The ivy has taken over everywhere. You could barely see his grave.”

She added that it was the first time there had been any problems with her brother’s grave.

Martin’s mother, Jenny, who now lives in Dorset, rarely has the chance to see her son’s grave.

However, when she visited for his birthday, she was left in tears.

Charlotte said: “It broke her heart. Her words to me were, ‘I brought him into the world whole and wanted him to leave whole’,

“If she had known this is what Martin’s grave would have become, she told me she would have had him cremated, so at least he could have remained near her.”

The family pay £25 a year for basic grave maintenance and have noticed that other plots are in a good condition.

“Why doesn’t Martin’s grave look like this,” asked Charlotte.

Canon Mark Standen, rector of St Margaret’s, apologised for the state of Martin’s grave, adding that they responded immediately to Charlotte’s complaint.

He said: “We have been trying to undertake a major clearance of the graveyard for quite some time but ivy, sadly, causes a great deal of difficulties.

“We have got a team of volunteers who do work in the graveyard.

“Ninety-five percent of the churchyard looks really great but at the perimeter of it, where Mrs Puttock’s brother’s grave is located, there are amounts of ivy we’re still trying to get on top of.

“This is the next area we want volunteers to address. It’s an ongoing battle.

“We’re very sorry for that any distress has been caused to Mrs Puttock.”

Charlotte has since cleared her brother’s grave of some of the ivy.