COMING TO A CEMETERY NEAR YOU!
Meet our Cemetery of the Year 2008 Judges
Martin Birch
Having been involved within Bereavement Services for the last 15 years, Martin has undertaken all related duties from ground level upwards including grave digging, grounds maintenance, cremator operation and chapel duties. Over the years, he has worked up from supervisor level to assistant manager to the more recent senior management. Martin as gained a great deal of knowledge and understanding which is extremely beneficial as a CYA judge.
Martin holds a full Diploma from the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management (ICCM). He is currently the Deputy President of the institute where he sits on the Corporate Committee.
Ken West
Ken was employed with the Cardiff Council between 2001 – 2003 where he held the position of Bereavement Operational Manager managing 8 cemeteries and a twin chapel crematorium handling 4,000 funerals a year. He re-tendered the Cardiff Funeral Service during this period creating the lowest cremation funeral cost in the UK.
Following his time in Cardiff, he moved on to become the Bereavement Services Manager, where he managed a crematorium and three cemeteries from 2003 until 2006. During his time, he introduced several new initiatives. One such project included reclaiming graves in a cremation shift process designed to complete a minimum 80% of cremations through a single unit and a memorial safety inspection and renovation programme (2006). A pet cremation scheme designed to utilise spare (human) cremator capacity is currently at an advanced stage of development, and was launched in 2007. He retired from this post at the end of September 2006 after 45 years cemetery and crematorium service.
In 2007, Ken West acted as a judge for the Cemetery of the Year Awards and was an assessor on the Crematorium Technicians Training Scheme.
Kate Woodthorpe
Dr Kate Woodthorpe is a lecturer in the Faculty of Health and Social Care at the Open University, where she is very involved in one of the Faculty’s most successful courses, ‘Death and Dying’.
Kate has been researching cemeteries since 2003, when she began her doctorate at the University of Sheffield under the supervision of Professor Jenny Hockey and Dr Ian Hussein. Her research took place at the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium and explored how people felt about the cemetery, the bereaved’s relationships with the grave plots, staff perspectives on working in a cemetery environment and the role of the cemetery in the local community as a green space and local heritage resource.
She is particularly interested in the future of cemeteries in the UK, in terms of the increasing demand for individual expression and the pressures on cemetery spaces to be made sustainable. For serveral years, Kate has been involved with the Natural Death Centre and in April 2008 was invited to be a panel member at the London Green Funeral Exhibition.
Thomas McDowell
Tom began his career in 1979 as a Horticultural Apprentice in Scotland, gaining excellent working experience of the industry over the years. Throughout his career, Tom continued to learn and gain experience from colleagues, eventually working as a Parks Manager in both a client and contractor role. His experience of the industry is extensive and following a period working for the City of Westminster as a Parks and Cemeteries Manager, he returned to Scotland, when appointed as the Bereavement Services Manager for Falkirk Council.
In February 2006, he was appointed by South Lanarkshire Council to realign cemetery operations into a new and modern Bereavement Service and project manage the build and landscaping of the new crematorium. He currently holds the position of Bereavement Services Manager, with responsibility for the management of a new crematorium, 54 burial grounds and is currently on the final leg of studying for his ICCM Diploma.
David Quinn
Currently David is involved in training Masons to the required standards for the BRAMM fixers Licence.
He is a member of both the National Association of memorial Masons Technical Committee & Training Committee.
Nicholas Thomas
From 1993 to 1998, Nicholas was a self-employed subcontract memorial mason. During his time as a subcontract mason, his responsibility was to plan, produce and fix memorials to the very highest of standards, always keeping in mind that safety is of paramount importance.
Establishing Vale Memorials in 1998, he now owns and runs the business selling memorials directly to the public. As the proprietor of Vale memorials he has sole responsibility for strategic planning, sales and the running of two workshops with two employees. Nick is extremely involved with the National Association of Memorial Masons (NAMM) and currently sits on the NAMM’s general council as a voting delegate for his region. He is also an assessor for NVQ in stone masonry and as well as an assessor for the British Register of Accredited Memorial Masons (BRAMM). It is in these roles that Nick has become familiarised with the Charter for the Bereaved.
Maggie Bardzinski
Maggie joined St Edmundsbury Borough Council, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk in 1989 where she managed two cemeteries, one in Bury St Edmunds and the other in Haverhill. Aside from managing these sites, she was also responsible for six closed churchyards. In 1995, she gained her IBCA Diploma and became the Education Officer with the Local Branch.
During her time, part of her remit was to design and implement new areas for the disposal of cremated remains, make as much use as possible of the dwindling land available and to enable more choice of graves. Having retired from the industry in early 2008, Maggie is now enjoying more leisure time.