From the beginning of this month (May) Peter Aspinall of memorial masons George Squire & Sons in Bedforshire has been refusing to sell headstone and plinth lawn memorials fixed with dowels.

Instead he is fixing all the memorials as monoliths embedded into a concrete shoe buried 60cm or so below the ground.

Peter Aspinall is an active and prominent member of the National Association of Memorial Masons (NAMM), who developed their own ground anchor system to make headstone and plinth lawn memorials safer.

Some NAMM members have expressed concern about Aspinall\'s decision to stop using the ground anchor fixing system, but Aspinall says: "I\'m not for one minute saying everyone else is wrong, I\'m just saying this is the way we have decided to go."

The move follows the first meeting of the Memorial Safety Advisory Group (MSAG) in January (see the February issue of NSS) at which it was agreed that the safest way of fixing memorial stones was as monoliths.

The MSAG was formed as the result of an Association of Burial Authorities (ABA) meeting at Portcullis House, the new parliamentary building in London, hosted by Andrew Bennett MP, who chaired the Select Committee investigating cemeteries last year.

As a result of the Select Committee investigation the Burial & Cemeteries Advisory Group (BCAG) was established under the auspices of the Home Office to carry out some basic research - like how many cemeteries there are in the country and who runs them - and report back to the Government on any changes in regulations that might be needed.

They were supposed to be reporting back by the end of this year, but are already talking about a longer period of investigation.

The MSAG are reporting to the BCAG. The ABA are in favour of the use of a \'topple tester\' which can be used to measure the resistance of a headstone to a particular force applied to it.

The MSAG stated at their meeting in January that a headstone should remain stable when used by someone tending a grave to pull themselves upright and wanted that force measured in order to establish a standard.

It is in the face of these developments that Peter Aspinall says he has decided to fix all the memorials he sells as monoliths fitted into concrete shoes buried in the ground.

He has the U-shaped concrete shoes made for him. The stones are fixed into them using a lime mortar when they are first erected to make it easier to remove them for a second or subsequent inscription. If no more inscriptions are to be added a stronger, cement mortar is used.

He says the memorials are no more expensive, even though they have to be longer to accommodate the extra material in the ground. But the material that will be buried does not have to be polished and the stone does not require a polished plinth.

Because all the memorial wholesalers\' catalogues show stones with plinths, Aspinall is having to explain to customers that the stone will not look like the picture because of the different way of fixing it, but that they can still have a separate flower vase on the grave rather than set into a plinth.

"The comments I have had from people are that they didn\'t know how it was going to be fixed anyway. They expect us to fix it the way it should be fixed. I haven\'t had a customer yet saying they don\'t want the memorial fixed like this."

He says he looks on this move as a pre-emptive move towards something that is going to be forced on memorial masons by authorities using a \'topple tester\' or other method to establish the stability of memorials.

"If burial authorities are going to start using this topple tester - and I have no doubt more and more will - I won\'t have to worry about it."

Already some authorities are laying flat on the ground memorials they consider unsafe and the British Standard currently under development is examining the monolithic approach.

"I think what\'s going to happen is that memorial masons will be put in the position where this has to be done and we wanted to do it before that happens. I think everyone will eventually have to change anyway."I\'m not saying the way we are doing it is the only way to do it, but from a company point of view we believe it\'s the best way to go. I\'m not trying to score any points off anyone, I\'m just trying to do what I think is best. "I\'m not criticising other people. I\'m not saying there\'s anything wrong with the NAMM fixing system. But everyone agrees that the monolithic approach is good - you don\'t often hear anything bad about it. You attend a NAMM meeting and they still talk about monolithic fixing being as safe as houses.""