A Co Roscommon-based business is offering terminally ill people and bereaved families and individuals a unique opportunity – to participate in the creation of a handmade willow coffin for themselves or a loved one.
“It’s a service I don’t think anyone in Ireland is offering,” said Kate Burrows who, along with her husband Alan, has planted a quarter-acre of fast-growing willow on the small holding they purchased some years ago near Ballinlough for use in their enterprise.
Ms Burrows said the memory of her mother, Mary Brown, was central to them starting Westcountry Willows.
“Mum was laid to rest in a willow coffin over in Somerset. It was like nesting her in a thing of natural beauty,” she said. “It gave me a lot of comfort when Mum died to lay her to rest in this way and it made me wish that I was making similar coffins so that other families could benefit.”
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Involvement in the casket-making process can, she said, bring benefits. “It can be a really cathartic experience for them. One where they can get a great deal of comfort from knowing they are involved in the whole process of preparing for the afterlife.”
The fledgling enterprise specialises in a range of handmade basketry products including the eco-friendly coffins, which range in price from €1,200 to €2,000. The coffins are made entirely from willow, with no steel fasteners or fittings. For those planning a cremation, a plywood base, which some crematoria prefer for their rollers, is provided.
Their coffin offering saw the Burrows win the micro category at this year’s Irish Business Design Challenge Awards. They scooped €15,000 in the process, some of which has been spent weather-proofing a hayshed on their property so it can be used as a larger workshop.
Mr Burrows, who was driving an average of 1,000 miles a week while working as a photocopier maintenance engineer in Britain previously, said he and his wife feel firmly rooted in the community life of rural Co Roscommon and are committed to being as gentle to the environment as is possible.
Willow flourishes spectacularly in the local landscape and climate, he explained, with trees growing up to 16ft in a year.
There’s an added bonus to this, according to Ms Burrows, with the thickets they have planted becoming a mecca for wildlife.
“I have spotted willow warblers and reed warblers in there, even herons,” she said. “The place is teeming. There was nothing here when we moved in five years ago. Now there’s so much wildlife. You walk outside and it’s like a paradise.”
One of their more recent orders for a willow coffin came from an Irishman living in Britain who wanted to be buried in an environmentally friendly way. Another customer was a man with terminal cancer, whose family asked the Burrows if he could help to make his own coffin. The response was a resounding ‘Yes’.
“When someone dies, you want to perform a final act of love for them,” Ms Burrows said. “There’s nothing more embracing of that person... than creating their final resting casket – the capsule that they’re going to the other world in.”
Of the coffin weaving process, Ms Burrows said: “When I’m working I’m thinking about the person it’s going to. It’s got meaning. I’m connected. It’s not like products that are knocked out in a factory”.