It’s now a good half a year since the last Cherishing Sidmouth Cemeteries put together its Maytime 2024 newsletter. So, now at Chrsitmastime, here’s a look back over the last six months or so of what the CSC has been up to.
The Cherishing Sidmouth Cemeteries project is very much about marrying ‘the human and the natural’ – both the manmade history and the natural history of these special sites in the Sid Valley. It’s about nature [“Cemeteries can be a haven for nature and wildlife as long as they are incorporated thoughtfully”] And it’s about history and memorials [“Cemeteries can be a course in art, social and religious history. There were fashions in memorial forms just as there are in everything else, these pages record some interesting examples from Sid Valley graveyards…”]
HISTORY AND HERITAGE
A lot of posts, then, these last months have featured the history and heritage at the Sid Valley’s graveyards.
It was during the warmer days of late spring that volunteers of the CSC working party got into starting to uncover family graves in the Cemetery. And over the ensuing months, members were discovering graves at Sidmouth Cemetery almost every week, including for example a fine Arts & Crafts grave.
NATURE
The CSC project is also keen to promote the ‘nature‘ in the cemeteries and graveyards of the Sid Valley: “Cemeteries can be a haven for nature and wildlife as long as they are incorporated thoughtfully.” Here’s a little list of the sort of areas the CSC volunteers and steering group have been engaged in:
- Firstly, there is biodiversity in the parish churchyard – and as Ed Dolphin noted on the SVBG social media pages, there is a new project starting with the Devonshire Association Botany Section cataloguing the plant life of Devon’s cemeteries.
- Then there is the recognition that high grass does not equate to high biodiversity and over several weeks, the Cherishing Sidmouth’s Cemeteries social media pages looked at how other cemeteries have been managing invasive long grass, some more successfully than others.
- One way to suppress the growth of grass has been trialing yellow rattle in cemeteries and churchyards across the UK. The group Caring For God’s Acre sees Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor) as “a key player in restoring wildflower meadows” – a point being that many cemeteries are in fact made up of ancient meadows – and the Sidmouth Cemetery is no exception.
- CSC volunteers have also been replacing invasives with insect-friendly plants at the Cemetery – plants which have been provided by the district council.
- And they have been planting woodland bulbs at Sidmouth Cemetery. Whether it’s crocus (already planted in the late spring) or bluebells (English! and planted late August), it needs to be done with thought – which is exactly what’s happening, with advice and help from the council’s Horticulture Officer.
- Ultimately, it’s about managing the Cemetery’s grass for flowers – and in particular managing the Cemetery’s grass for wild flowers and insects. We are actually seeing areas of indigenous wild flowers returning – in a relatively healthy green sward – as opposed to the options of either over-long grass not touched for a very long time or over-short grass with dead cuttings strewn across the area.
MANAGEMENT
There has been the perception of late that the Management Plan for Sidmouth Cemetery still isn’t working – as shown by photos over the summer months of large areas of brown across the site. However, there have been efforts in managing the Cemetery’s grass for flowers – and this may well be paying off at last, boding well for the consideration of next year’s Management Plan.
A rather thorny issue has been controlling dogs at Sidmouth Cemetery. Back in August, the district council launched the first stage of its consultation on controlling dogs in public spaces, asking for any interested parties to put in requests for changes to the current 2023 Public Space Protection Orders by 30th September, to be included in the full public consultation process happening in the spring. The Cherishing Sidmouth’s Cemeteries group has put in such a request to change the current PSPO.
THANK YOU!
There is much to be grateful about.
At the end of the year, lots of thanks are due – to the VGS webmaster for managing the CSC website [for creating ‘A bank of information about Sidmouth Cemetery’], to CSC’s benefactors for their generous donations for the Cherishing Sidmouth Cemeteries project, and finally, a huge “thank you to the volunteers who have worked so hard” at Sidmouth Cemetery!
Here’s wishing all of these and the many supporters of the CSC project in the community a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
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