Laverstock and Ford Football Club secretary Roz Wyeth. DA5875P9VILLAGERS in Laverstock are preparing to do battle to stop a new city cemetery opening in their midst.

Salisbury faces a serious problem with an acute shortage of burial spaces.

The Devizes Road cemetery is full and the London Road one is close to capacity, so a new cemetery has to be found.

One option is a piece of land alongside St Andrew's Church in Laverstock, which is owned by the church but leased to Laverstock and Ford football club.

This piece of ecclesiastical land has been earmarked by Salisbury district council as a possible site for a new city cemetery and it has the backing of the church authorities.

But opposing the idea is the village football club, which is celebrating the recent news that it has been given a Football Association Charter Mark as one of the first-ever 'Community Clubs' in Wiltshire.

Opposition is also growing among villagers, according to one of Laverstock's district councillors, Ian McLennan.

He has carried out a survey in the village and so far has received 98 responses, which indicate that about three households are in favour of the church land becoming a cemetery, while 89 oppose the idea.

Mr McLennan said his research showed that, while just over three per cent would be quite happy to have the cemetery in Laverstock, 96.74 per cent of villagers wanted the land retained as a football pitch.

Mr McLennan said the cemetery proposal raises the same issues that surfaced when the council proposed the Duck Lane residential development.

Local people objected and felt "the city was treating Laverstock as its own".

He said: "The cemetery proposal appears to go against our community statement and raises the same village/city issues."

Roz Wyeth, secretary of the Laverstock and Ford football club, said the club was "desperately keen" to hang on to the pitch because they had parents "clamouring to send their children to the club".

Mrs Wyeth said the club had 14 teams, four for adults and ten for children, whose ages ranged from five years to 15 years.

She said: "If we lose this pitch, I don't know how we will cope."

The club does own 22 acres of nearby meadow land but Mrs Wyeth said that land was liable to flooding and it would cost the club a small fortune to turn it into permanent football pitches.

She said the club leased the piece of land from the church authorities on a month-to-month basis after the long-term lease expired two years go.

The club would dearly love to renew the lease, she added, even though the pitch was liable to flooding and there were times during the winter months when it could not be used.

She said the council should consider this, as well as studying access to the site, which would bring funeral cars along a narrow track also used as a cycle and pedestrian way.

Parks manager for the council Reg Williams said the Laverstock site became an option two years ago and the church authorities were keen to link in with the council because the land had been left to the church for ecclesiastical purposes, including burials.

Mr Williams said the council, in conjunction with the Environment Agency, had sunk water-test boreholes at this site and at another possible site, the Cow Lane allotment site, which lies between Laverstock and the city boundary.

He said the results of the surveys were nearing completion and a planning application would shortly be submitted to the council's southern area committee.

Laverstock and Ford parish council is due to discuss the matter at its meeting on July 12.