Holly Barrow Interments

A place of interment and remembrance for loved ones’ ashes

Nesting in the hillside of a once-deserted Kentish valley in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Holly Barrow provides a place where the ashes of you and your loved ones may rest peacefully for eternity.

Holly Barrow at Dode offers an alternative approach to natural burial grounds, graveyards and crematoria to intern your loved one’s ashes. It is a beautiful, comforting and spiritual setting for a memorial service and as a tranquil resting place for your loved ones.

Barrows are one of the oldest funeral traditions in the UK. Holly Barrow at Dode is a modern interpretation of the ancient long barrows which, after some 5,000 years, are still a revered feature of our landscape today.

Holly Barrow is a unique, subterranean resting place nestled in a hillside. Inside, 400 handcrafted niches have been lovingly created for the interment of ashes.

The sacred space that Holly Barrow occupies in a meadow below an ancient Norman Church is like no other. Once part of the deserted medieval village of Dode, it is a place of stories, focus and reflection, a tiny place but one that is precious in history.

We believe that each of us is unique and each of us have a story to tell - it is here in the silence and beauty of nature that those stories can be told, and memories revered. Here we may return from whence we came, to the good earth that our distant ancestors knew, that same earth that sustained, nourished and loved both them and us. Time is simply immaterial here.

The Lost Village of Dode is a place where everyone is welcome, a special place of understanding, tolerance and healing. It is already a place of literally thousands of individual stories.

We are here for you...please do get in touch to find out more about reserving a niche for the interment of ashes and other memorial services at Dode.

If required, a wake may be arranged, either in the grounds or within the ancient, sacred walls of Dode Church itself.

Traditionally, niches are left open but as an additional and personal touch each niche may either be sealed with an engraved stone memorial tablet, an individual hand made iron grill or a stained glass window, individually prepared with love and care by sympathetic local craftspersons to reflect the life of the deceased.

British Law states dictates a length of 99 years for the duration of interments but here at Dode we believe that the departed should be at rest forever and so after a respectful period of 10 years following the last interment Holly Barrow will be permanently sealed and the external entrance passageway backfilled, leaving only a grassy mound, a simple fitting memorial to past lives well lived.

The simplicity of the barrow together with the silence of its setting and the beauty of encircling nature makes it a place to which you will wish to return, a place to remember, to reflect upon your loved ones, their lives and their legacy.

The Barrow and grounds will be open to loved ones to visit on seven specified days each year, or alternatively private (charged) access may be arranged if required.  The dates to visit for 2024 at present are (*subject to change):

*21st March, 1st May, 20th June, 2nd August, 22nd September, 1st November, 21st December