DEATH isn’t a subject most of us want to spend much time thinking about – and that’s hardly surprising. We all know it’s inevitable but in the meantime life is much more important, and so is striving to prevent people having to suffer an early demise through disease, war, criminal acts, famine or accidents that could be prevented.

Our reluctance to discuss matters surrounding death is also responsible for the fact that our society is facing a looming crisis of just where to put the bodies of those who have passed on.

A national survey last week found that most councils in this country have less than 20 years of space left in their cemeteries.

Here in East Lancashire, Darwen cemetery is set to run out of room in five years, Pendle Council has only ten years capacity left in Colne, and Blackburn’s Pleasington cemetery has space for only another 15 years.

In a country which right-wing politicians keep insisting is ‘full up’, it does seem strange that we are insisting on filling up ever-increasing open spaces with our deceased.

Cremation obviously does allow for less space to be taken up by our dead but we also have to respect the wishes of those whose religious views mean bodies must be buried in the ground.

Without meaning to sound flippant though, it seems strange that more thought has not been given to the idea of burials taking place at different levels underground.

After all, we manage to build car parks as much as ten storeys underground so why can we not have burial chambers constructed in the same way?

Historically, the wealthy had family vaults where generations were buried close to each other, so what is inherently wrong with layered underground cemeteries?

Of course it’s true that the bereaved may feel happier about being able to stand in a pleasant, tranquil area on a sunny day in front of a memorial to a departed loved one. It is a difficult issue to tackle but we have to address it.

On an island where space in residential areas is at a premium we surely cannot go on for ever filling fields with coffins that lie just six feet below the surface.