SADLY I go to a lot of funerals as I have lived all of my 75 years in Durham City and have been a rugby club member for some 60 years and worked for Durham university for 47 years, so I have quite a few old mates who've met their maker at some point.

I was at a very well attended funeral on Tuesday of an eminent Durham academic who had a Humanist ceremony at the South Road crematorium.

I was about a third up the huge queue and I did not get a seat, standing along the side of the speakers, and there must have been another hundred mourners who would not get into the actually hall itself.

Durham crematorium is now sadly not fit for purpose as more funerals come straight to the crematorium rather use a church.

Bearing in mind how huge some churches are, I wonder who decided the crem should be as small as it is.

The council has made inroads by modernising the crematorium but nothing has been done to make the actual building bigger.

The other major problem at the crematorium is that the mourners stand outside until the undertaker and family arrive and then they all go in while at a church the congregation is already in the pews when the funeral cortege arrives. There is limited shelter at Durham crematorium and I am sure on a really wet, horrible day some mourners may succumb to our North-East weather.

Malcolm Rolling, Carrville