Friday 6 June 2025
Alan & Rita popped into the cemetery to drop of ballast that is needed to make up the concrete slab on the Stowell grave, hopefully to do this job on Sunday weather permitting.
Visitors from Australia came in just after they arrived, Diane was looking for her 3 x grandmothers grave, Mary Faulkner buried in the non conformist part of the cemetery in 1858. This gave us a rough area where this would be but could not recall a grave of that name. Luckily our Chairman Miles was down from Glasgow this weekend so we rang to see if he could help as we had no paperwork with us. Astrid told us he was out walking the dog, we looked behind us and there he was just coming in the cemetery, he looked up where the grave was, sadly no headstone or marker but at least we could show show her and her husband where she was laid to rest with her 27-year-old son.
Nice to be able to help and so lucky that we were all there to help. Makes our work very rewarding.
Sunday 8 June
Chris, Astrid, Alan, Rita and Miles working in the cemetery today. Plus a short visit from Dave who brought in some flowers and shrubs to plant in our wild flower garden. Lovely to see him.
First job was mixing concrete to repair the Stowell grave, Miles did the mixing, Chris carrying the concrete in buckets over to the grave and he and Alan filling the broken base with the concrete. This took a number of buckets until the job was completed and a great job done by the ‘boys’. Rita took a photo of the finished job with the boys behind the grave looking proud of what they had done. But Oh dear! both photos taken came out blurred, very disappointing.
Rita cleared the weeds and sieved the earth from the stone chipping on the Randle 10-29 grave, Astrid assisted in cleaning up the base, Chris and Miles washed the stones and re-laid inside the grave.
Alan re-laid the red granite stones washed last week back in the Stowell grave, later covering the new concrete with plastic sheeting to prevent it from drying out too quickly.
Chris and Rita sorted out the small Buddleia planted by the Pantomime wall as they were looking a bit straggly and covered in bindweed. They cut back the long grass and bindweed and trimmed them up to look nice and tidy.
Miles did a good job cleaning out the Crick grave 10-40 and Alan cleaned out the Jorden grave 10-13, also doing a good job.
A good mornings work, all went home tired.
