Unwinding Green-Gym style

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: