By Elizabeth Wulfhorst
SHREWSBURY – What does a historic church, with a graveyard dating to the early 1700s, do when it runs out of burial room? For Christ Church in Shrewsbury, part of the borough’s notable Four Corners which dates to pre-Revolutionary War times, the answer lies in something even older: the columbarium.
A columbarium is any type of public structure designed to hold urns with human cremains, usually in niches. Columbaria date back to the early Roman Empire when cremation was the norm. They can be freestanding or incorporated into other structures in cemeteries or churches. Unlike a mausoleum, which generally holds one important individual or family, a columbarium contains many niches, thus holding dozens or even hundreds of urns and accommodating many more people in a smaller space.
According to Don Burden, former mayor of Shrewsbury and a member of the Christ Church graveyard committee, this was the perfect solution to a problem a long time in the making.
“Having been the former mayor here for eight years, I was often asked, ‘Hey, how do I get a gravesite over at Christ Church?’ ” Burden said. “And at that point, they were pretty well full up.”
“It became quite obvious that there was no more space at Christ Church,” he said, but people still wanted to be buried on a site where there are “many generations of family members.”
He said it wasn’t feasible to find a piece of property elsewhere since the whole point was to remain in Shrewsbury, at the church.
“We thought this would be appropriate,” Burden said. “It accommodates the needs of individuals who want to have their remains or their family remains continued here in a tradition of historic Shrewsbury and the graveyard. And this seemed to be a compromise to respond to that need.”
Over the past few years cremation has become increasingly popular. In the Two River area, Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Middletown and Fair View Cemetery in Red Bank both offer columbaria as choices other than in-ground burial for a person’s final disposition.
Kim Honecker, a former member of the Christ Church vestry (the governing body of an Episcopal parish) and parishioner at the church for over 30 years, now helps out where and when needed. She has been keeping a spreadsheet tracking the interest in a columbarium and said some people – she and her husband included – have already given funds for a future niche while others have expressed a desire to purchase a niche once the columbarium is built. Each niche will accommodate two urns (so two sets of remains) and each columbarium will hold approximately 56 niches, according to literature from the church, depending on the final design.
The committee would like to have about 50 percent of niches paid for in the first columbarium be- fore construction begins on the project. Much like a gravesite at the church, purchasing a Columbarium Commitment is actually just a license to use the niche and does not constitute ownership of any real property.
Burden said the committee took into consideration the historic nature of the graveyard as they planned the location and look of what may eventually be three columbaria. They will be located in a row along the fence that lines the driveway of the church at 380 Sycamore Ave.
“It won’t be high,” Burden said of each individual columbarium. “You know, it wouldn’t be blocking any views or anything. It would be totally integrated with the graveyard as it exists today.” He said the columbaria will not “stand out” in the graveyard but rather blend with the surroundings.
“It represents, I think, a tasteful testimony,” Burden said.
“Years ago people were just buried in family plots,” Burden pointed out. “Somebody would buy a plot and there’d be room for 18 or 20 people. But in today’s environment, people still want some connection, but there’s not that space available. And this accommodates it.”
“I think it’s a really good solution,” Honecker said. “I never really believed, I mean, as many years as I’ve been there, I never really thought I could make Christ Church my eternal resting place.”
“All the graves are sold,” she said, with fewer than a dozen plots remaining empty at this point. The columbarium will “address the challenge, allowing people to remain in the community” when they thought they couldn’t.
Honecker stressed that the columbaria are not just for parishioners of Christ Church.
“We felt badly because there have been a couple times where people have approached the church and wanted somebody buried there. They just assume there’d be plots there which, of course, is crazy with the amount of years that they’ve been putting souls in there,” she said.
The bottom line, she said, is the church “really likes to be welcoming. And we just felt like this was a way to serve the community, in that people that are nonparishioners can come in and purchase a niche.”
For more information about purchasing a niche in the columbarium, contact the Christ Church office at 732-741-2220 or christchurchshrewsbury@verizon.net.
This article originally appeared in the Feb. 17-23, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.
