A GRIEVING father was distraught to discover his stillborn son’s memorial 'headstone' had been replaced with that of another child.

David Giles, 38, and his ex-partner, Amelia Roche, had gone to Sands Memorial Garden at the Headington Cemetery to mark the first anniversary of losing the child who they tragically never got to meet.

However, after arriving at the site on Saturday the pair were horrified to discover another child’s headstone in place of their son’s.

On an already emotional day, to make matters even more heart breaking for the pair, toys and candles left by the family for their son, David Junior, had now been placed around the new headstone.

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Mr Giles, a painter and decorator from Wood Farm, said: “To go there for the first anniversary and to not be able to find him was quite distressing.

“When we got to the spot where he normally is and there’s some other child’s name on the headstone.

“I can’t put it into words - it beggars belief.

“We thought they had taken his headstone away.

“It was just panic and shock, thinking ‘where is he?’ - it was very upsetting.”

After a quick search of nearby plots, the couple realised that their son’s headstone had been moved to a different location as a result of landscaping works at the cemetery.

Mr Giles contacted Oxfordshire Sands, a charity which oversees the memorial garden for bereaved parents, and received an apology, but feels parents should have been pre-warned to avoid any potential upset.

The father of four added: “My ex-partner had to take all his teddy and candles off the other headstone and put them on David Junior’s.

“It just doesn’t seem right to not have told us - it seems very disrespectful.”

The cemetery in Ingle Close, near to the John Radcliffe Hospital, is managed by Oxford Direct Services on behalf of Oxford City Council, who had carried out a series of improvement works over the summer following complaints that the garden had become unkempt.

A note on the Oxfordshire Sands website explains how while the improvements were being made, the mementos and keepsakes were to be removed and stored at the cemetery office.

However, Mr Giles, said that during the works, he had visited to find the memorial headstones unceremoniously strewn across the grass, while the family’s keepsakes left for David Junior were ‘covered in mud’.

Oxford Mail:

Oxford Mail:

He added: “They were just left all over the place, it wasn’t very nice to see.”

A city council spokesman said: “We take the maintenance of the cemetery and its memorials very seriously and carry out any work with the utmost sensitivity.

“The stones are actually memorial plaques laid down along the Sands Memorial path in the Sands area of the cemetery.

“Sands burials do not have individual plots therefore memorials are not fixed to a specific grave.

“The stones were temporarily moved to lay the new path in the area so as to not damage them and were placed along the new path once it was completed in August.

“Over the past year, the Sands area has undergone a renovation to tidy it up, carried out in partnership with the John Radcliffe Chaplaincy office and Oxfordshire Sands.

“The project has been communicated to visitors to the area since May 2017 with signage.

“The Chaplaincy office also contacted the families who have placed the plaques and Oxfordshire Sands communicated the works on social media.”