The funeral of a Southampton great-grandmother which was abandoned because her grave was not dug has been rescheduled for Friday afternoon.

Shocked family and friends of Margaret Higginbottom will be reunited again for the burial – more than four weeks after she lost her battle with cancer.

Grieving relatives were left distraught when they arrived at South Stoneham Cemetery to find the family plot was unprepared for her burial, as revealed in yesterday’s Daily Echo.

Following emergency meetings with undertakers Cooperative Funeralcare, the family will now be able to lay the body of their great-grandmother to rest on Friday at 1pm.

But some of those mourners who travelled hundreds of miles to be at her funeral last Friday will not be able to attend.

Her son Dave said: “What do we do? We need to lay her to rest because she’s been at the chapel of rest for far too long.

“We wanted the funeral later in the day because we wanted to get as many people to be there as possible.”

Mrs Higginbottom, 71, from Castle Street, died on September 2, and the retired cleaner’s wish was to be buried next to her late husband Frederick, who died in 2009 aged 79.

Staff at Cooperative’s Butts Road office said they prepared paperwork to send to Southampton City Council while Frederick’s headstone was removed in preparation for the burial.

But when the funeral procession arrived at the cemetery on Friday afternoon from a memorial service at St Edmond’s Catholic Church, in The Avenue, they found that the grave remained undug.

An investigation has been launched but Dave, 47, from Sholing, added that his family would be seeking damages.

He said: “I know it doesn’t make it right and money will never make it right, but the grief they have caused, the upset, the loss of dignity of my mother’s big day, it’s all gone. All our memories of the day are turning up for nothing.

“Someone, somewhere has completely messed up.”

Investigation A spokesman for Southampton City Council said the council would waive burial fees.

They said: “We are investigating how an administrative error lead to Southampton City Council’s Bereavement Services Team being unaware of arrangements for a burial on Friday resulting in the grave not having been prepared.

“Graves are only prepared once final confirmation of the date and time have been received from the funeral director.

“The investigation will determine how this unfortunate and distressing incident occurred and measures will be put in place to prevent this from happening again.

“Whatever the findings of the investigation, our thoughts are with the family and friends of the deceased at this very difficult time.”