PARISH councillors in Dunster want to keep alive an option for residents who want to be buried in the village.

The village’s current cemetery in St George’s Street was opened in 1950 and has only about 30 available burial plots remaining.

Now, councillors have applied for planning permission to convert a neighbouring three-quarters-of-an-acre paddock for use as a new graveyard.

Parish council vice-chairman Cllr Kevin Sully said some cemetery plots had been lost over the years because a hedgerow had grown into the site and part of the land was now in an embankment which could not be dug.

Cllr Sully said a recent review of the existing cemetery had shown a few extra plots could be found but the council still needed to have the new graveyard site in place by the summer.

He said: “The last thing you want is for somebody to die and there is nowhere to bury them.”

Cllr Sully said demand for plots had slowed with the opening of a crematorium in Taunton in the 1960s but many people still wanted to be buried in Dunster.

The St George’s Street cemetery replaced an older graveyard behind the village first school which was thought to date to the mid-1800s, and which in turn was used when graves ran out at the parish church.

Parish clerk Sarah Towells said the paddock was at the furthest the end of Dunster Allotments and at the foot of scenic Grabbist Hill, which was within Exmoor National Park.

She said it was currently agricultural land used mainly for grazing sheep.Mrs Towells said a mixed hedge running alongside a footpath to Grabbist Hill would be kept, but a bramble hedge would be removed to allow a new gateway from the car parking area to be installed and then replanted with hazel, beech, hawthorn, copper beech, dog rose, and blackthorn.

Dunster’s county Cllr Christine Lawrence agreed the graveyard extension was necessary because the existing cemetery had few spaces left.

Cllr Lawrence said: “It is a long way to go to Taunton and can be a problem for some families getting in there for a cremation.

“I am pleased the parish council is making provision for future burials and interments, and this paddock is in such a lovely setting as well.”