Agreed. I myself wish to be composted. But I am amazed at his failure to recognize the optics of the situation. The reaction is completely predictable.
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And from reading that link this seems more about the updates to the house in general as it comes across as historic landmark type of building and he just did them without checking.
Something similar happened in Missouri, with veteran grave markers.
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gah. ānot supposed to be reusedā sigh. if they are ones that were taken away for replacement, errors, changes, etc. there in MO or in the parent article, then who cares. As long as nobody is stealing from the grave itself why should it matter?
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Appreciated, but I can quite easily choose to not visit the links - I was trying to be altruistic 
ā¦Is there a class or something in business school? Callousness 403, maybe?
#The real crime is that sofa - itās hideous!
The kitchen is g-dawful
as is just about everything else. Aside from the sofa (and the shameful window-replacement) the vaulted bedroom is the only non-eye-gouging room in the place.
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Ugh, they even gilded the corbels. Is this guy best buds with The Donald, or something?
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Ā£80,000 in fines, Ā£220,000 in court costs. Apparently, being hauled into court can be a ruinous endeavour.
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What do you want the poor guy to do? His original plan to pave the patio with the skulls of the children got shot down by the contractor.
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Priorities. Gravestones are a dime a dozen, and I think repurposing them spoke to his general character, Grade II listed buildings are each unique, and his alterations were criminal. I think that lots of property developers would have done much the same, if not for the laws protecting these sorts of buildings.
The BBC video makes it clear.
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Three years ago, Kim Davies won a court battle to get pesky inspectors off his land.
Brecon Beacons mansion owner wins court battle with planners
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I know, itās much easier to put everyone in one place at that point rather than worrying about grave sites.
I donāt really see why gravestones with little historical significance have to be treated with so much reverence after this many years. Apparently respect is a function of the amount of money you spent on memorials, as there is really no shortage of children in unmarked graves - Bill Bryson has an interesting anecdote of how churches in Norfolk look like theyāre sinking, but itās really that the churchyards have risen by about 3 feet due to the tens of thousands of people that have been buried in them over the years.
I always find tombstones interesting and not creepy at all - there are often interesting accounts of peopleās lives and I often go around old churchyards to read the epitaphs. As for the patio, the headstone mentioned here wasnāt used as a paving slab - it was cemented to the wall:
In any case, many churches have memorial plaques on the walls and floor, and I donāt think of them as being like a āpalace for an Iron Curtain dictatorā. Iād be much more upset about the destruction to a listed building (which has value to actual living persons) and less about the fact that we donāt know the exact burial sites of long-dead children buried in an overgrown part of a derelict churchyard.
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Plus, you know, the whole sofa-thing.
How about the period jacuzzi?
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Sure, thereās that. On the one hand, I really donāt care how other people decorate their own homes and whether they have bad taste. Where thereās illegal damage to a listed historical building, thatās another thing.
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#WHICH IS NOT COVERED WITH A āMOSAICā
Itās just tiny monochromatic tiles with no picture formed whatsoever.
ā āāāā
one star - would not buy again
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The father-of-three also replaced 300-year-old carved stone windows with plastic ones, ripped out an Elizabethan staircase and damaged valuable architecture at the Georgian-style manor.
An elizabethan staircase? In a Georgian manor? Did those 18th century gentry have no respect for the past?
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So if the gravestones were your great-great-greatā¦-grandparentsā, youād be fine with this guy spilling his drinks and tracking mud onto them? Or if they were your childrensā? Iām not overly sentimental, but I do have sympathy for the fact that the stones were marking the deaths of real people, some of whom were likely the progenitors of people still living in the regionā¦
I would have a problem with gravestones being treated that way, but I donāt find cementing them to the wall or floor in a similar way to memorials in churches to be horrifying in itself. I would want to see local history preserved where possible, including churchyards, listed buildings etc. As for my own ancestors, my great-great-greatā¦-grandparents probably have hundreds of direct descendants other than me, and I have dozens of great-great-greatā¦-grandparents - I have very little personal connection to them. If it were my own children, of course I would object - now weāre talking about a recent gravesite and direct memories of loved family members. I can understand why some people might have a problem with it and I do object to people destroying historical artefacts and not keeping to building codes, but I think this article makes too big a deal about things like the fact that some of the graves had children buried in them (which wasnāt that uncommon at the time).
I care about local history and people who might want to trace their ancestors (and agree that this was a really bad idea and illegal for many reasons), but dislike the idea that every grave must be preserved (despite this being physically impossible), childrenās graves are hallowed for all eternity (despite the huge number of forgotten children that died before age 5) and gravestones are generally creepy (rather than fascinating).
Maybe he should have to keep this gravestone though, as the Bible verse seems apt:
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