Woodland Burial Parks offer a natural and more meaningful alternative to traditional burial and cremation options and differ in many important ways from other woodland or green burial sites, and offer a totally non-denominational approach. The company are totally committed to maintaining the parks as areas of natural beauty and enhancing the biodiversity of the woodland.
They have active programmes of education involving children from the local communities, local schools, and other interested organisations. They also actively support the charity Tree Aid, to whom they donate a sum for every burial, ash interment or ash scattering, and The Wildlife Trusts local to the Parks are involved in maintaining the woodland.
The first burial park at Colney Wood has been operating for five years and is situated at the western edge of the city of Norwich. Colney Woodland Burial Park won The Cemetery of the Year award in 2005 and 2006 and has also won an award for the design of the buildings and an Award by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) for the development of the Park.
Woodland Burial Parks are investing in a rolling programme of ten burial park developments based on the Colney Wood concept. Geographical centres for future development are in the London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds areas over a five to seven year period.
Within the programme, Gaynes Park in Epping Forest, Essex, and Chilton Park in North London have been the first to be developed.
As well as proving Project Management services to the development of these two sites, Davis Langdon put together the framework of contractors that will enable Woodland Burial Parks to fulfil their long tern plan of expansion and continuous improvement.
One of the major challenges of the project was working on a live site, and one that needed sensitivity. The development at Gaynes Park required part of the woodland to be cleared to accommodate the timber frame buildings, but initially an entrance drive, service trenches and a road network had to be built within the woodland to support work vehicles as well as funeral services and visitors. As such the project worked to a sectional completion, allowing the Park to begin operating.
The structures themselves, the gathering hall, woodland hall where the services are held, the reception building and maintenance barn are all timber frame structures, from sustainably sourced suppliers. The site on which they are built is only cleared of as few trees as necessary, as maintaining the woodland is key. And the buildings themselves all have a reciprocal frame structure, a roof structure that is totally self supporting.
Sustainability is key to the ethos of the Woodland Burial Parks, and each development was very carefully managed to ensure that the impact was minimal to the wildlife and habitats they encompassed. Biomass heaters have been used on the sites, using woodchips as fuel to heat the buildings.
Through the work on the Gaynes Park and Chilton Park project simultaneously and the development of the framework agreement, the Davis Langdon have been able to ensure that the Woodland Burial Parks continue their planned expansion in to new sites without having to compromise their approach.
