Grave Trade

We follow the staff of family-run funeral directing business, T. Cribb and Sons, and a handful of archaeologists as they go about their daily business: the dead and buried. This is the Grave Trade. We follow 4th generation Cribb John, his brother Graham, and daughter Sarah, as they lead a team of 60 staff across ten sites. We meet the funeral conductors, pall bearers, drivers, mortuary technicians and other members of the team and watch them work as stories of every kind of funeral unfold. We meet the families who want to give their loved ones the very best send-off possible, from a £20,000 gold-plated coffin, to a funeral for a woman without means or family.  Alongside the everyday business of a modern funeral director, we follow the extraordinary work of archaeologists as they examine burial practices from Neolithic times, to Anglo Saxons, right through to the Victorian era. Grave Trade reveals how we buried the dead and dealt emotionally with death through our history. From the people responsible for putting us into the ground, to those who dig us back up again, we lift the lid on the dead.