Bargoed Natural Burials Wins the People’s Awards for Wales and the UK

Each year the Association of Natural Burial Grounds presents awards for the best natural burial grounds in the UK. Out of around seventy sites across the UK, Bargoed Natural Burials have just been announced as the overall UK winner of the award after being voted the Wales Regional winner.

Keith Hall, who runs the site, said:

“The award is based solely on feedback from families who have laid loved ones to rest. We realise that this is a very difficult time for families and friends so we do our very best to help them as much as we can. We were delighted to win this award, particularly as we have less burials than many of the sites and have only been open since 2021. We were told that the judges were very impressed with the quality of the feedback we received.”

The judges said that this site had the highest percentage of outstanding, detailed feedback forms. Families had taken time to write in depth accounts of their experiences and the service they had received. All staff, including the grave digger, were mentioned as being supportive and helpful.

Bargoed Natural Burials is a member of the Association of Natural Burial Grounds and its Code of Conduct requires the burial site owners to provide clients with a feedback form after the funeral. Clients are invited to complete the form after each funeral, which is returned direct to the association. The feedback is the criteria used by the judges for the award.

The Association of Natural Burial Grounds said: “These awards are different to any other kind of assessment of green cemeteries. They are not about how sustainable each site is, the facilities that are available or the way the land is managed. The People’s Awards are all about the people involved, the level of service they provide, the personal touches and the impact that each natural burial ground manager has made on the families of those who they have helped to bury.”

The burial site is at Allt-y-Garreg woodland and is part of the family farm, some 180 acres of land which has been managed mainly for wildlife for nearly thirty years. The creation of a natural burial site was an appropriate way of helping to safeguard the land for wildlife habitat for the future, as well as following on with the owners’ ethos of helping to protect the environment. The natural burial site is on what is now a nature reserve; two of four fields that were all planted with over eighteen thousand indigenous trees in 2012. The trees surround circular wildflower meadows.