THE grieving son of an Amesbury woman has been dealt another blow by the discovery that she was buried in the wrong grave.

The man, who lives in Salisbury, said the funeral service for his mother at Amesbury Abbey Church on September 3 was distressing enough.

But when he and his family got to Durrington cemetery for the interment, they discovered the gravediggers had prepared the wrong plot.

Instead of his mother sharing a plot with her late husband, she was laid to rest with her husband's sister in the adjacent plot.

"She should have been buried with my late father," said the distraught 49-year-old son, who does not want to be named.

"But she has been put in with my auntie.

"There was a space on my father's headstone for my mother's name to be added.

"I pointed out what had happened but the funeral people said there was nothing they could do."

He said he and his partner were devoted to his 78-year old housebound mother and regularly visited her at her home, often staying at weekends.

They were with her when she died at Salisbury District Hospital and went to see her at the chapel of rest.

He said he was told a representative of the funeral company, Gerald Burden, of Amesbury, which is owned by Dignity Funerals Ltd, that it now means his mother must be exhumed and reburied.

He has also sought legal advice and was told the procedure, which involves the Home Office, could take up to a year.

Tim Coad, funeral services manager for the southern counties region with Dignity Funerals Ltd, said his company was sorting the matter out.

"We're doing everything we can to put things right," he said.