A COUNCIL has said it will ‘do what it can’ to tackle flooding in a cemetery.

Photos have emerged which show graves in Egremont Cemetery surrounded by floodwater following heavy rainfall last week.

One Egremont resident said it was ‘so upsetting’ to see headstones standing in the waterlogged ground and called on the council to take action.

Egremont Town Council, which owns the site, said a drainage survey would now be carried out to see if there was anything that could be done to help.  

Elaine Woodburn, chair of Egremont Town Council, stressed that the cemetery ‘wasn’t full of flooded graves’ and that the issue resolves within a few hours of heavy rainfall.

She said: “We won’t be unique in that the cemetery does get affected by water. We’ve had heavy rainfalls lately. All of us will have seen wet areas within our own gardens.

“Once the rain stops, within a couple of hours, they go. This is what happens at our cemetery.

“We have agreed to have a desktop survey done anyway to check the feasibility of other sections to bury in. We’ve added a drainage survey on to that to see if there is anything we can do.

“The areas that do tend to pool, we don’t bury in anyway. We can’t be held responsible if there is a lot of rain. I imagine every cemetery suffers.

“Ours is a popular cemetery and is award-winning. It’s one of the best, most well-kept cemeteries in Cumbria and the town is very proud of it.

“We will do what we can to help but we’ve got to deal with the climate, the same as anybody else.

“We’ve got thousands of people buried there. If there’s one grave particularly suffering, then we will look at what we can do, but we can’t stop the weather.”