By ‘C’:
A new site
today – and very handsome it looked too, on the day I went to do a ‘recce’:
That was
Dorchester village cemetery last week (as opposed to Dorchester Abbey Cemetery),
on the afternoon of Easter Thursday. A
slightly more ample area than we are used to at graveyards!
 |
| North-east entrance |
 |
| Site viewed from south-west |
A lovely
green space, all the more peaceful for there being only one other visitor all
the time I was there. I guessed most
casual visitors to the village would have gravitated towards the Abbey and/or
the water meadows beside the River Thames; while a good number of village
families had made for the rec/playground on the other side of the road.
Today was a
slightly different story: 14 Green-Gymmers on site; and the
weather nowhere near as pleasant. The wind
had flipped back to ENE, but at least it had stopped raining. Thus all the reconnaissance photographs were
taken in glorious sunshine, and operational pics in dull grey conditions.
An ivy bash
(“Goody goody!”) was the reason for our being there whatever the weather. That the grounds had been kept in a good
state of general maintenance, was clear from the recce. What was also apparent, however, was that
there was scope to improve biodiversity by knocking back the latest attempts by
encroaching ivy to gain more than a foothold.
‘HQ’ for
tools and tea-break was on a grander scale than we are used to:
History
behind it there is aplenty, I am sure.
It is with difficulty – also respect for the Green-Gym colleague who
really does work as a tour-guide in an almost-stately home – that where the
stories are not known, I refrain from inventing tales after the manner of the
wonderful Lettice Douffet. (Whose exploits will be celebrated in a
revival of the play concerned at a theatre near us this very week).
One story
that is true is that the raised ground on site dates back to the time the cemetery
was first commissioned. The water-table
in the village was higher then. So a
mound had to be created, in order to allow for a 6’ drop for coffins on to dry
earth.
One of the
delights of Green Gym is how much can be achieved when you work as a group, or
set of sub-groups. Volunteers set to rescuing
trees by lopping, sawing, pulling, and unravelling ivy – hence the call, “I’m
just unwinding!”
Plenty of
targets presented themselves for our own op Iv, both ground and tree ivy. Our
priority, however, was the tree-ivy:
 |
| “There’s plenty of ivy to go round” |
– All done, of
course, without disturbing any live birds’ nests or (where ivy was climbing
walls) damaging stonework.
The other useful
tool this morning: a jammy bar, for prising ivy away from tree-trunks:
By session end,
really rather a lot of ivy had been forcibly removed, and bagged up ready for
disposal:
Before leaving, we
had time to tour the site: admiring our handiwork, of course, but also searching
for our complement of jammy bars. Along
the way we discovered some of the headstones put in by the Commonwealth War
Graves Commission. Although they relate
to the World Wars, they have only relatively recently been erected. These two are for soldiers of the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry and the Berkshire Regiment respectively:
No comments:
Post a Comment