A mother was heartbroken after her baby's grave was buried under rubble when a wall collapsed during renovation work at a church, writes Victoria Owen.

Marie Johnson had tended the memorial plot where her son Aaron's ashes are buried at St Luke's memorial garden, Oxford Road, Cowley, for nine years.

But family mementoes on the grave were wrecked when the church wall fell on top of it. The building is being renovated as a records store by Oxfordshire County Council. At first, Mrs Johnson, of Brambling Way, Blackbird Leys, was too upset to see the damage.

She said: "No words can explain how I feel. I was gutted when I saw it.

"My other children have put things around the grave, which are of sentimental value, but they've all gone. We are hoping to retrieve some of them. It just hasn't sunk in and I'm devastated."

Her son was stillborn and Mrs Johnson, a secretary, and her company secretary husband, Neil, 31, decided to bury his ashes under the branches of a cypress tree. But it was toppled by the crumbling 4m wall and had to be cut down.

Mrs Johnson said: "Every year the whole family went to the grave and we tend it a lot. We chose the spot especially because of the tree. I want a new tree to be put in its place.

"When you lay someone to rest you don't expect something like this to happen when it's a child it's doubly heartbreaking and I just want things back the way they were." A 17m length of the stone boundary wall, between the church and the former Nuffield Press building flats, was involved in the accident.

County council cultural services officer Nancy Hood said the disaster had marred the otherwise smooth 3.1m church conversion, and the memorial garden had been temporarily closed.

She said: "We will do everything we can to reinstate the garden and replace the memorials, but there may be further damage while we clear the site and rebuild the wall." Building firm Benfield and Loxley said: "We realise this is a sensitive issue. We will be as careful as we can in removing the stone and reinstating the garden."