Having a guilty conscious for forgetting the black membrane to finish off the Wills grave (L 17) last Sunday, Alan went in the cemetery on Wednesday to add the membrane and back fill the grave with the stones. A photo was taken for John (committee member) so he can see his family grave when he next reads the diary.
A lovely sunny and warm day today, Dave, Chris, Astrid, Rita and Alan working in the cemetery today. The boys worked on the hedge along Jam Factory Lane, a job the girls had started a couple of weeks ago. Two dumpy bags later and the job was finished of. In the meanwhile the girls were hard at work clearing weeds, ivy and grass from graves in Section M. This included Broom (18) Harwood (19) Stevens (20) and a nice job they did. The girls noticed one of the granite posts on the Harwood (M 19) had become loose and it was decided to cement it back into position. Alan decided to let Chris have a go at this job, the first time he had attempted this work, Alan removed all the old cement from around the post, Chris mixed up the cement and applied it to the kerb ends and placed the post into position, gently tapping the post until it sat snugly into place. Well done Chris. The gang felt it was time for a tea break. As Alan and Rita had to leave early it was agreed that it would be an ideal time to assess where and what jobs should be tackled next. It was agreed to concentrate on the non conformist section as a number of graves were identified as requiring attention. In particular, the Winslade Section 7/15 and Burridge 11/42, the kerbs to both having moved and needed to be cemented back into position. They then moved over to section 9 and 10 and noted that there were a number of kerb stones that needed to be cemented back into position, enough work to keep the team busy for some time. Also a lot which were completely covered in ivy – a job for the girls.
While they were in this area, 3 visitors arrived looking for their family graves and they came over to see us. Dad Peter from Bridgwater, and son Paul and Val from Epsom. They are members of the Friends of Wembdon Road Cemetery; from the maps and memorial photographs on our website, they had traced the graves of the Storey, Brown and Vinten graves who were all related and buried in the cemetery. Being more familiar with the cemetery the team showed them the location of the graves and left them to happily find and photograph their family memorial stones. They were especially pleased to find their great/grandfathers grave so a photo was taken of Peter and Paul beside the grave.
