MOURNERS at Redditch's Abbey Cemetery have been paying their last respects to their dear departed's feet!

It has been a tradition in the Anglican Church to bury people so the body faces East to West.

But when the cemetery was redesigned in the early 1960s - including new lawn sections - the headstones were placed back to back.

This means many people have been buried the right way round but with the headstones at their feet.

"There's a right way and a wrong way to put a coffin in a hole," explained Rev Geoffrey Paterson.

"People have traditionally been buried from East to West for over 100 years."

But because the gravestones at the Abbey Cemetery face back to back a lot of people have been buried with the headstones at the wrong end of the body.

According to a high-ranking Anglican official this means they are among the clergy.

"It's accepted practice that priests are buried with their feet the opposite way to lay people, so presumably all those people have been buried as priests."

But superintendent at the Abbey Cemetery Mr Ken Eliot said the practice had now stopped.