The times they are a-changing: church funerals
Family Tree do not just ‘do’ humanist funerals or green burials! Not a recent development, but brought home by the three most recent funerals we have arranged. Today we had an extraordinarily beautiful – even exciting – high church funeral in Tewkesbury Abbey....
Funeral Car Trouble
Gloucester car wash jockey hit the back window with his metal ended lance, which crazed like a rifle shot as we were transporting the empty coffin to where the person was at rest an hour before the funeral. Despite clear film overlaid there was glass everywhere and an...Shoulder High, with Friends
In the USA coffins are trundled on wheeled trolleys. Not so in the grand old United Kingdom: or at least in our Stroud funerals! Here friends and family hoist their beloved shoulder high and can swagger and stagger together with him one last time down the aisle. Here,...Farewell to the revolving door funeral in Stroud
Stroud funerals are becoming more intimate and more personal as friends and family take their time to say farewell. Farewell the quick 20 minutes at the crem. Here at Matara, a coffin rests in a quiet room while people can pay their last respects. Surely this is part...Beautiful Stroud funeral venue
The Quaker ‘Friends’ Meeting House’ on Chestnut Hill in Nailsworth near Stroud most graciously allowed a family to hold their funeral there last week. There are not many places for a Stroud funeral as peaceful, as beautiful, nor as sweetly hosted as...How to say Farewell well
There are many ways – here is one, at the beautiful Matara Centre, Kingscote Park, near Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. The coffin was brought into a side room, where friends and family could sit with their beloved father/friend/colleague, and write a message on a...BBC Radio 4 for Stroud Funerals!
James Showers was a guest on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live on his 68th birthday Dec 6 – as a Stroud Funeral Director who has had an interesting career.
The source of the ‘death taboo’
How did Britain change so drastically from a nation obsessed with death and funeral etiquette to one – until recently – so averse to any mention of the topic? Firstly, Queen Victoria died, in 1901. Then came the War; thousands of young men swept in great...
Victorian Values
It has been said that a culture is either obsessed with sex or with death. For the Victorians, it was death. Death in Victorian British culture was ever-present; elaborate death rituals sustained the living, and set the tone for a whole way of life....What to do when someone dies
We will tell you exactly what to do, and help and guide you through each of the different stages.