The Friends of Tottenham Cemetery have recently become members of an organisation called Caring for God’s Acre.
There are over 25,000 burial grounds across the UK, ranging from small rural medieval churchyards to large Victorian city cemeteries, spanning different cultures, religions and centuries.
Caring for God’s Acre was established in 2000 as a national charity, promoting the conservation of burial sites and supporting the people who look after and maintain them.
Many burial sites are managed by a few volunteers who are keen to preserve both the monuments and the wildlife but want guidance on how best to achieve this. Caring for God’s Acre can help them to preserve rare species of plants and wildflowers and advise on management of grassland to encourage wildlife whilst still allowing access to visitors and relatives. Issues such as lichen on gravestones and monuments falling into disrepair are also part of the group’s remit and they run a telephone and email advice service for burial ground managers, signposting to other experts if required.
The organisation encourages events in churchyards to highlight their importance for biodiversity and provide support for annual celebrations such as Love Your Burial Ground Week and Love Your Yew Week.
I was lucky enough to be able to go to the annual conference of Caring for God’s Acre at the end of October. It was held in the village of Norbury in the wonderful Shropshire Hills National Landscape. The day included a series of presentations about how rural graveyards, in particular, can be really rare examples of unimproved grassland, supporting a whole host of native plants, lichens, fungi and insects. These grasslands have never been cultivated and so retain their unique character.
Also, of course there are the yew trees, often found in churchyards, but sometimes predating the churches by hundreds of years, maybe even thousands of years. https://www.ancient-yew.org/
Even our very urban Tottenham Cemetery can be a haven for wildlife and the Friends Group is working hard to get a management plan agreed that will create just such a haven.
Pamela Harling
