Grave-digger

A gravedigger is a cemetery worker who is responsible for digging a grave prior to a funeral service.

If the grave is in a cemetery on the property of a church or other religious organization (part of, or called, a churchyard), gravediggers may be members of the decedent's family or volunteer parishioners. Digging graves has also been one of the traditional duties of a church's sexton. In municipal and privately owned cemeteries, gravediggers may be low-paid, unskilled, and temporary laborers, or they may be well-paid, trained, and professional careerists, as their duties may include landscaping tasks and courteous interactions with mourners and other visitors. In some countries, gravedigging may be done by landscaping workers for the local council or local authority.

A gravedigger implements a variety of tools to accomplish his primary task. A template, in the form of a wooden frame built to prescribed specifications, is often placed on the ground over the intended grave. The gravedigger may use a sod-cutter or spade to cut the outline of the grave and remove the top layer of sod. Digging the grave by hand usually requires shovels, picks, , and/or other tools. Cemeteries in industrialized countries may keep a backhoe loader and other heavy equipment, which greatly increases the efficiency of gravedigging.

Typically, gravediggers - at least in most Western countries - will use a wooden box to put the soil in. This box consists of several large pieces of wood that fit together, and the box is assembled next to the grave. Once the grave has been dug and the soil from the grave has been placed in the box, the box will usually be covered with a piece of tarpaulin or similar material. The soil will then remain in the box until the day of the back-fill, when the funeral takes place and the soil is emptied back into the grave after the coffin has been lowered, after which the box is disassembled. Due to the close proximity of graves in cemeteries (4 feet between the centre of each headstone is common in modern UK cemeteries), invariably the wooden box is often placed in front of one or more other graves, and is seen as a nuisance to those wishing to visit graves adjacent to a grave that is due to be filled.

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