The human remains of a prestigious British Jewish dynasty, the Brights of Sheffield, risk being dug up after their graves have been levelled by a bulldozer, the Jewish Chronicle reports. The family mausolea are in what is (or was) a private Jewish burial ground in the Peaks district.
The Brights were founding members of Sheffield’s Jewish community and drove the Sheffield steel trade, and their unique beehive-shape stone tombs were the final resting place for 15 members of the dynasty dating back 100 years.
But in December the tombs were demolished by adjacent landowner Anthony Bevis who claimed the graves were empty and applied to the Peak District authorities to build his own family tomb over the Jewish site.
He had previously used some of the tombstones to build an extension to his house. Mr Bevis will nevertheless have the right to seek title over the land based on a squatters’ law unless it is challenged within 12 years, a period which closes on August 24.
The JC article, by Jonathan Kalmus, quotes Dr. Sharman Kaddish from Jewish Heritage UK, as saying that the case presents “an open invitation for a developer anywhere in the UK to appropriate any Jewish cemetery and desecrate it and build all over it.”