Ordsall Churchyard Wildlife Group

Ordsall Church has approximately three-acres of churchyard, now very largely full. About 10 years ago we set up a wildlife group to make a virtue of necessity: recognising that we couldn't maintain much of it which was already overgrown we looked to bring in more volunteers and, with regular but minimal intervention, enhance the the area for wildlife (mostly birds, small mammals, plants).

The irony has been that the people who joined the project have on the whole been much more concerned with keeping the area neat and tidy so in fact we have managed to maintain the area much more attractively that I ever imagined possible.

There are a series of ironies here: that the place of the dead should be regarded as a haven for the living; that we do this in a largely rural area; that we wall off our dead from the rest of life and then visit the garden of the dead with cut or artificial flowers; that we write their names in stone so that their physical decay below ground is contradicted by the words above - and sooner or later they are all forgotten.

Putting that aside, I am very pleased to say that the work of the group was recognised recently by the Bassetlaw District Council - and on behalf of the group Steve Aston, its chair, received a certificate in recognition of all they had done to enhance the area.