Surrey Green Burials

Hi, I’m Ian, the founder and director of Surrey Green Burials. I have lived in Surrey all my life and have over twenty years of experience in the facilitation of funerals throughout the county. In my spare time, I enjoy being with family, fishing and walking my dog in the Surrey hills.

After some personal loss of my own, I began to explore how I could make the funeral experience as smooth and straightforward as possible for others going through a bereavement. Having worked with traditional funeral methods for a number of years, I decided to redirect my business and offer a much more personalised service. I wanted to give families and their loved ones the opportunity to take back control of the funeral process should they wish to.

Somehow, over time, funeral directing has moved away from being people-centred and personalised, to a place where people have been virtually cut off from the process of death altogether. At Surrey Green Burials our aim is to give families back control of what happens after death. Without this, we feel that families lose the opportunity to say goodbye in ways which they may want to.

That is why at Surrey Green Burials we pride ourselves on being able to guide families through this procedure in a meaningful manner. We will never assume that we, as your funeral guide, know what is best for you.

We believe that if you and your family have all the information to hand, you will be able to make informed choices about the way you wish the funeral ceremony to develop and progress. By doing this, the process will be more relevant and personalised to each family and will offer a greater opportunity for a deeper resolution to the grief that people suffer around death. Death is after all, at the centre of what it means to be human.

At Surrey Green Burials we offer you the time and space you need to adjust and think. This is so important at an extremely difficult time. We can be there to gently guide you through the process, giving you control and allowing you the space to make those difficult decisions. 

If you wish to hold the funeral at home in your garden, in a community centre or in woodland, we can assist you in making this happen. Our fully qualified celebrant Nancy will be on hand to help you create the rituals and ceremonial aspects of your service if you would like them.

The other consideration when developing my business was that of the environment. Currently, 75% of deaths in the United Kingdom end in cremation and this has a huge impact on the environment. We at Surrey Green Burials are always looking into alternative solutions to cremation. Although we currently don’t have the means to move away from cremation entirely, we can certainly do our best to lower the impact on the environment by considering the materials we use. We can also offer natural burials at two of the most beautiful sites local to us in Surrey, which of course have a much lower impact on the environment. 

We currently offer environmentally friendly coffins and caskets which have extremely high sustainability credentials and we have also been able to source environmentally-friendly urns for ashes.

We are constantly searching for alternative methods and greener solutions and one of our current areas of research is for Resomation (water) Burials 

We are hopeful that over time we can offer this as an alternative to cremation.  

So many aspects of funeral traditions are damaging to the environment. That is why at Surrey Green Burials we are committed in our actions to being kinder to the planet.