Alan, Rita, Astrid with Felix in the cemetery today, a sunny morning if a bit cold, but fine as they made sure that they were working the sun.
Alan concentrated on the Prew 11-26 finishing off the cementing he started on Wednesday. Astrid and Rita decided to tidy two graves that had become overgrown with grass and ivy, Vickery plot 79 and Palmer plot 110 and a good job they did, they discovered that the graves had not been photographed, numbered or on the Friends Website and no inscriptions. Both graves have loose kerb sets that will take some time to sort out particularly the Palmer grave that has a large Holly tree growing in the middle of it. The girls also found the headstone belonging to the Bishop family plot 108, another one missed. Although the headstone is leaning over, it is sound but the face is beginning to laminate but the inscription can be clearly read. A photo has been taken, along with the inscriptions of al three graves.
The girls also gave the Topping grave a tidy up, sadly this grave has sunk to one side since it was last cleaned and tidied. In the grave is Sir Hugh Topping who was chairman of the Conservative party in the 1930’s. This memorial consists of a large granite block and kerbs.
Alan in the meantime was washing the stone chippings belonging to the Prew 11-26 and the Young 11-30, some had already been cleaned by Chris in the week, the clean stones were then replaced on the concrete slabs of each grave.
The group of three then tidied up the area around where they had been working and Alan and Astrid pulled a full dumpy bag of weeds etc. over to the storage area. There is nearly 20 full bags now, and with winter on its way it may be an ideal time to ask SDC to collect them for us.
