I was busy prepping a map of our proposed cutting plan and going round the churchyard I found another grave near the unknown soldier of William Sproat who was not on our list of known war graves, somehow as luck would have it a volunteer for the common wealth war graves society called Ian Pearson came over to clean the war graves and my supervisor was in the area at the right time to ask him if he wanted to be involved in the easter holidays. Of which he agreed to come back in our coming up maintenance session. I was off for a week but came back for our next maintenance session on the 6th of April.

Churchyard maintenance session 06/04/24

The session we had saw the biggest turn out we have had as of yet with 10 people which for us was a big milestone. We also made a lot of progress such as revealing hidden graves, weeding, litter picking, planting and setting up another nest box.

Picture shows a previously hidden grave by Holly

A war grave that was previously hidden by Holly.

This is me raking and taking out some weeds from the grave of the unknown soldier.

The day was rather productive and Ian whom had been cleaning the graves found that there were some in the churchyard who might actually be eligible for the a common wealth headstone and a few more which probably should be on the site, altogether he had found 22 plots that have connections to the first and second world wars.

The grass cutting plan meeting

We had a meeting with the head of the Clean and Green team who are responsible for cutting the grass in our churchyard to see if we could change the cutting times on 09/04/24. It was an overall success and they want to use our churchyard as an experiment to see if they can then implement similar plans in other churchyards across County Durham. We are going to delay the first grass cut until the end of April and then at the back of the churchyard keep the grass long until July, every other place they will cut like normal. I will also be doing experiments on some of the grave plot sites to find alternative ways than weed killer to stop weeds from growing in the plots, such as using different types of mulch or planting a native wildflower species that is rather dense, loves shade and will stop weeds from growing there called Bugle, which also pollinators love too, but I wont be doing any testing till after the first grass cut because grass clippings are one of the mulch experiments I will be doing.

Picture shows me discussing the grass cutting plan in the pouring rain

I must say we must have been successful because the clean and green team showed up the next morning to take away the rhododendron and Holly branches we had felled.

The History of the churchyard first proper meeting, 10/04/24

On 7pm we had our first meeting of which there was 15 of us in total, our aim? to make it so people can easily find the graves of their loved ones in the graveyard and have information at their finger tips. I am personally not doing much in this bit because I am supposed be doing the wildlife side but as it is tying in with making the churchyard more wildlife friendly I still attend the meetings. This is as we have a hope to put up information boards about the history and wildlife. So far we have started a shared google drive where people can upload documents to it. If you would like to join yourself please email me: ruthpeers83@gmail.com and I can add you to the document or if you would just like to email documents to be uploaded, please feel free to do that as well.

One thing we all agreed on in each of these meetings is how everyone wants paths into the churchyard, and here is a bonus picture of me and my supervisor talking to people at a coffee morning on 12/04/24 about the grass cutting plan.