Bringing Churchyards Back to Life

11th June 2007

The Living Churchyards project is a joint initiative between the Cornwall Wildlife Trust and the Diocese of Truro. Cornwall’s Living Churchyards Project has been running for 12 years with over 60 churches signed up to the scheme. This spring the project has been re-launched with the help of funding from a Lottery Awards for All grant, the D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust and the Helen and Geoffrey de Freitas Charitable Trust.

Your local churchyard is incredibly valuable as it provides refuge to wildlife in a landscape where habitats have been lost to development or changes in agricultural practises.  Churchyards often provide an oasis of unaltered habitats, unaffected by chemicals or ploughing where many declining plants, once common in the wider countryside, still exist.  These unusual habitats also support a diverse range of birds, insects, reptiles and mammals.

Cornwall’s Living Churchyards project can provide support and advice to those interested in managing their local churchyard for wildlife.  Funding obtained as part of Cornwall’s Living Churchyard re-launch has been used to purchase the “God’s Acre Trimmer”.  This is a machine specially designed for grass cutting in and around graves and is capable of tackling long vegetation and rough ground. It is also equipped with a metal bar which can be set at different heights to protect the blades from curb stones on graves.  Churchyards across Cornwall which are in Cornwall’s Living Churchyard Scheme will be able to hire this machine from the Trust.

Funding has also been used to fund a series of four workshops at Cornish Churchyards.  The next workshop will be at St Julliatt’s Church at Lanteglos-by-Camelford on Tuesday 19th June with a focus on wildflowers, although there will also be a demonstration of the “God’s Acre Trimmer”.  The third and fourth workshops will be held in September and November with a focus on lichens and hedges respectively.

For more information on Cornwall’s Living Churchyards Project, including how to join, details of the workshop or to hire “God’s Acre Trimmer”, contact Robert Moor, the project’s voluntary co-ordinator on 01872 272929 or email.

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