Cemetery café to keep booze licence

A UK cemetery café has retained its alcohol licence following a heated meeting during which councillors called for it to be revoked.

Visitors to the Inspirations Coffee House, located in Stranton Cemetery in Hartlepool, are able to purchase alcoholic beverages until 9pm thanks to its alcohol license granted by the council.

However at a “highly charged” council meeting last night six councillors, of Hartlepool Borough Council, called for its license to be revoked for the purposes of returning “Stranton Cemetery to being a place of rest”, as reported by the Hartlepool Mail. 

Independent councillors and members of Putting Hartlepool First spoke against the licence at the meeting with one objector stating alcohol should not be sold in a cemetery full stop with concerns raised that the council-owned building could be turned into a pub should it ever be sold.

Another said a “significant amount of people have been morally offended” at the council’s decision to allow drinking at such a location, despite Conservative group leader, Ray Martin-Wells, claiming he had not received any complaints in his role as chair of licensing.

At the full council meeting councillors instead voted to retain the café’s license as long as it was under council ownership, who would be expected to revoke it if the building was ever sold.

One resident, Vera Bradshaw, whose son Brian, 36, is buried there, told the paper she was “disgusted” by the decision while another said it was “appalling.”