More than 2,000 gravestones in Oxford have been branded unsafe and laid flat, as part of a city council safety campaign.

Richard Kell tests a gravestone at Spring Road cemetery in Abingdon

Wooden stakes have been used to secure a further 279 headstones, which are considered unstable.

The city council has spent two months testing about 13,000 headstones in the city's four cemeteries and 13 church- yards, amid increasing fears that people visiting relatives' graves could be injured or even killed by falling gravestones.

Cemeteries in Wolvercote, Headington, Rose Hill and Botley are affected, as well as churchyards including St Andrew's Church, Headington, SS Mary and John, Cowley Road, St Mary the Virgin, Iffley, SS Mary the Virgin and Nicholas, Littlemore, St Mary Magdalen, St Cross, St Giles, St Sepulchre and Osney churches.

Council spokesman Louisa Dean said: "Before the testing started we had predicted that 20 per cent of memorials would be staked or laid down, so we are pleased with the final figure. We would like to thank the public for their patience as these tests were carried out.

"The memorials do remain the responsibility of the family that erected them and we have placed a notice on each unstable memorial for anyone with an interest in the grave to contact the Cemeteries Office at Wolvercote Cemetery."

Testing was carried out in three parts -- a visual check, a physical condition check and, if necessary, a device was used to assess the force it would take to knock the memorial down.

While there have been no incidents in Oxford's burial grounds, a six-year-old boy suffered fatal injuries in a graveyard in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, in 2000. His parents received £33,000 compensation from the local council.