We meet on the first Wednesday of each month from March to November and spend a healthy morning maintaining our beautiful churchyard here at St. Margaret's.

We welcome anyone to come and join us any time from 9am onwards on the first Wednesday of the month and we often end the morning with lunch at a local hostelry. This a great way to keep fit and spend time in convivial company.

"Conservation is not about putting plants before people.
It is not about letting everything go wild.
It is not about imposing a particular plan that doesn't suit."

From The Living Churchyard Survey

At St Margaret's we are very privileged in the setting of our church and many people may say why bother managing the churchyard for wildlife when there is so much countryside all around? But much of the land around us has been intensively farmed in the past, which means that meadow grassland and it's related flora and fauna is unlikely to re-establish. Also land that is not actively managed with conservation in mind will, in the fullness of time, revert to scrubby woodland that has little value for wildlife.

Churchyard remnants of old meadow grassland soil may have remained undisturbed for hundreds of years. In the past sheep, goats or even geese may have grazed these areas, which would have kept the coarse grasses at bay thus allowing the wildflowers to grow. Add in old timbers, gravestones, hedgerows, trees, and even the church building itself and there is a vast range of habitats, for plants and animals alike.

At St Margaret's the summer hay meadows produce attractive flowering grasses and tall herbaceous plants. These areas are vital for butterflies and insects, reptiles and amphibians, and if we lose these creatures then we also risk losing mammals and birds higher up the food chain.

In an age when natural habitats throughout the world are increasingly being lost to developments of one kind or another, the importance of our churchyard as a sanctuary for both people and wildlife cannot be under-estimated. However, managing our churchyard in sympathy with nature takes a lot of time, effort and money, especially in the summer growing season and although we employ a gardener and have a active working party it would be great to enlist the help of a few more volunteers - perhaps to adopt their own 'patch' to love and care for. If anyone thinks they would be interested in doing this, please contact the rector.