Looking after ashes

Here at Tester & Jones, while many families will pick up their loved one’s ashes from us fairly quickly, once we’ve had them returned from the crematorium, we often agree to hold a deceased person’s ashes for a while on behalf of their loved ones. This can be for several reasons.

Very often a family wants some time to think about what they’d like to do with the ashes and, nowadays, there are many options from getting them interred or scattered to having them incorporated into a piece of jewellery or a seed bomb, or even sent up into space!  And, of course, families can decide to do several different things with one set of ashes – including splitting them between family members or friends. Storing the ashes for families does give them that important decision-making time.

In other circumstances, we are occasionally asked by one member of a couple to hold onto some ashes until they have both died and their ashes can either be scattered or interred together.

As a proud member of SAIF, we follow its strict Code of Practice and have an ashes management policy in place. This covers ‘appropriate storage, handling, recording and dignified management of ashes’. As a funeral director, we are legally required to deliver the ashes to the person who made the application for the cremation, so you can rest assured that they are securely stored and managed here. To hand them over to somebody else (or if there has been a change in circumstances) will need written permission.

Every now and again – and, usually, after some time has passed – we will remind families that we are still holding onto their loved one’s ashes. At that point, we do get people popping in to collect them.

We should say that, having been in business for more than 20 years, we have been in possession of some ashes for a substantial amount of time. We always try our best to contact the family they belong to but, occasionally, they prove impossible to get hold of. 

If we have been storing some ashes for more than 10 years and can’t make contact with the family, we do have an arrangement with Wealden Crematorium, where ashes can be scattered in a short, dignified service in their beautiful grounds.

If you think we might be storing your loved one’s ashes, please do give us a call, as we would really love to reunite you. Alternatively, if you’d like to talk to us about what to do with ashes, do get in touch.

If your loved one’s ashes are already safely with you at home and you’d like to have some made into a piece of jewellery or maybe incorporated into a paperweight, we can help you achieve that. Please call us on: 01892 611881 or pop into our building in London Road.