Is there existence any law rendering burial in consecrated ground compulsory ? most people have a strong desire to receive such interment, ...... [See Notes and Queries Vol. 5 (127) Apr 3 1852 Page 320 for the rest of the question

Though not a lawyer I venture express the opinion that, if preferred, burial may take place in unconsecrated ground. The law exacts the registering of the death, and inhibits a clergyman from officiating except within the consecrated boundary. Indeed the burial ground of dissenters is not consecrated according to law, although it may have been licensed. See Notes and Queries Vol. 5 (130) Apr 24 1852 Page 404 for the remainder of the reply.

You numerous correspondents who have written on this subject, seem to have overlooked two cases in point, which occurred some time ago in this neighbourhood:

the one, that of John Trigg, whose exxentric will given in p 1325 of Hone's Every day Book, whose coffin is now to be seen placed on the beams of a barn at Stevenage;

The other, that of Richard Tristram, who was buried in a field in the parish of Ippolitts.

The grave stone marking the resting place of Tristram was, till quite lately, a lion of the neighbourhood; but a sacriligious farmer, annoyed at the injury done to his hedges by visitors to the tomb, has either removed the stone, or sunk it below the level of the ground. Local tradition assigns a singular cause to their burial in these spots. It is stated that they were shocked at the unceremonious way in which the sexton in a neighbouring churchyard treated the remains disinterred whilst digging a tomb, and therefore they left the most stringent injunctions that their burial might place them beyond the reach of similar usage.
L.W. Hitchen

Notes and Queries Vol. 6 (119) Feb 7 1852 Page 136

I have met with several instances of this. In the parish register of Mayfield there are entries of four brothers named Beany, who were buried in a field near their father's house, because they died of the "plague". This was in the seventeenth century. At Rotherfield, Sussex, a gentleman who had some quarrel with his rector was buried in his own garden, in order to avoid any association with the object of his ill-will. This may have been about the commencement of the present century; but at length his representatives, wishing to dispose of the property, found the tomb an obstacle to its sale, and the body was exhumed and reburied in the churchyard. The singular instance mentioned by your correspondent of a body being deposited upon the beams of a barn, reminds one of the means of disposing of the dead resorted to by some of the tribes of the American Indians, who bind their deceased friends in matting and similar substances, and then fasten them in a horizontal position across the branches of a tree. In Banvard's panorama of the Mississipi there were several representations of this singular method of "crossing the sticks". M.A. LOWER, Lewes.

Notes and Queries Vol. 6 (123) Mar 6 1852 Page 229

To the list we may add Dr Solomon of Liverpool, who acquired a fortune as the inventor of the Balm of Gilead, and was buried in a field at Mosley Hill, near the town. AGMOND

Notes and Queries Vol. 6 (123) Mar 6 1852 Page 229

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