FREE-spirited Deborah Thielker lit up lives and those close to her wanted her last resting place to reflect that.

Now what they have achieved in Deborah’s name could change the way cemeteries look.

A special church court has said that Deborah can have an inscripted and unconventional red sandstone memorial in Kilpeck churchyard, striking a blow against the “depressing” trend for uniform grey granite gravestones.

Uniformity was what some in Kilpeck wanted when the memorial was first proposed, that’s why the issue went to the Church of England’s Consistory Court for a landmark ruling reached by Roger Kaye QC, Chancellor for the Diocese of Hereford, who took representations on paper.

Out now, the ruling recognises the care and thought that had gone into devising a unique mem-orial to an artistic and creative life.

The Judge said: “I note a depressing recent tendency for uniformity in some grey granite and polished gravestones.

“I see no principle or law why, with care and balance, a person’s unconventional and artistic lifestyle should not be reflected in the choice of memorial. Such exceptions to what might be described as the norm can themselves be a source of inspiration.”

And Deborah, wrote the judge, was one of life’s lighthouses, illuminating with “fun and joy” the world and people around her.

Deborah Thielker was 52 when cancer claimed her in 2005. Her fiance Iain McCaig applied for a special memorial to honour a woman he described to the court as “extraordinary, brave, strong, gallant and original”.

Born in New York, Deborah moved to Oxford in her teens and spent the next few years shuttling between the UK and USA before settling here. She had five children and trained as a teacher, working for a time at the Waldorf School, Much Dewchurch.

Deborah’s children, grandchildren and ex-husband all live in Kilpeck, according to papers put to the court, and more than 100 people attended her funeral service, which had to be held in the village hall because the listed church was too small.

As proposed, the unconventional memorial would bear a quoted inscription from the early English mystic Juliana of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

But that didn’t sit well with some in the village who feared floodgates opening if the application was allowed.

In his ruling, the judge said that argument had “only some weight” leaving the way for such cases to fall on individual merits. He hoped that “charity and goodwill” could now overcome any division the issue had raised.