A mahogany casket measuring 7 feet 11 inches long, 4 feet 6 inches wide and 30 inches deep was supplied by funeral directing firm Thorley Smith to hold the remains of Mark Bamber, The Daily Mail reported Friday.

"It really was at the very edge of what is dignified. It has got to be the biggest casket ever used in this country," said Thorley Smith's Alan Roby.

"And it is a casket rather than a coffin. A casket is a straight rectangular box. It would have been impossible to make the coffin shape at that size."

Bamber's remains had to be pulled to the cemetery by a team of horses.

"There are no hearses available that would be big enough for a casket that size so there had to be a horse-drawn platform for the journey to the cemetery," Roby said.

"He might even have been the heaviest man ever to have been buried in this country. The funeral really stretched the capabilities of all the people involved."