TWO YEARS UNBURIED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 April 1939, Page 4

TWO YEARS UNBURIED

DISPUTE CONCERNING WILL OF BRITISH SQUIRE. BURIAL HELD UP PENDING DECISION. Two years after his death, the body of John Henry Dalton, 62-year-old squire.-, of Thurnham Hall, near Lancaster, still, lies unburied in the chapter 'house pi; the ruined Cockersand Abbey, .near his 'former home. The. lead-lined coffin was taken to the Abbey when he died in 1937. It has not been moved since. The first part of the burial service was conducted, but the committal part' of the service was omitted, for there iwas no burial.

Since his death there has been a dispute about his will. The executors of a will which he made in 1920 sought to have it accepted although the original will was lost and all they had was a carbon copy. Dalton’s mother, brothers, and sisters disputed the will, saying that he had made a new. will.

The Probate Court upheld the 1920 will. About £20,000 was involved. “We held up the burial until we knew the result of the case in the Probate Court,” Miss L. Dalton, a sister of' the dead man, said.

Mr William Augustus Dalton, brother of the dead squire of Thurnham Hall, said that the chapter house at Cockersand Abbey was really a family chapel. “The door is kept bolted and barred to prevent holiday-makers from entering,” he explained. “Until we have decided whether we are going to lodge an appeal against the decision of the court, my brother’s coffin will remain there.” It was stated in the Probate Court that John Hery Dalton had been tenant for life of a substantial estate and also had free estate which amounted to £2o,ooo—the sum at issue.

He died after a long illness at a sanatorium at Cranham, Gloucestershire.

Arrangements were then made for the funeral. The body was taken to Cockersand Abbey, and the Vicar of Cockerham coniiucted the first part of the burial service. But the body was never buried.

When the family have made a deci-, sion about an appeal, however, the coffin will be taken to Glasson Dock Cemetery, a few miles from the Abbey, in which it has lain for two years? and buried there. /