Beautiful Burial Grounds

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By Andrea Gilpin, Communications & Development Manager

As well as being important as places where loved ones are laid to rest, burial grounds also serve as valuable, accessible green spaces in both country and urban areas. They provide opportunities for recreation, reflection, and connection with nature. There are over 25,000 in England and Wales alone, ranging from small rural medieval churchyards to large Victorian city cemeteries, spanning different cultures, religions and centuries. The size of each site ranges from under quarter of an acre for a small parish church or chapel, to over 200 acres for a large cemetery. Added together they represent a significant area of land that can support our native wildlife.

Despite their importance, burial grounds are often undervalued and can be subject to neglect or destruction due to urban development pressures, lack of funding for maintenance, mismanagement, and other factors. 

This is why Caring for God’s Acre was established in 2000 - as a national charity to promote the conservation of these unique spaces and support the 150,000 volunteers who look after and maintain them. 

So why are burial grounds fabulous places for nature?
   

Species Rich Grassland
Often these sites are the most ancient, enclosed pieces of land in a parish, town or city. The grassland will have been relatively undisturbed, re-seeding naturally for hundreds if not thousands of years. It will also have been both scythed for hay and grazed by animals during its time as a burial ground. A benefit of this management over a very long time is a rich diversity of grasses, flowers and animals.

As many readers of this article know, this old unimproved grassland was once widespread in the UK but is now rare.
A species rich, diverse grassland may store more carbon than one that is less diverse and we are currently working with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and the Church of England to start to measure just how much carbon may be locked within a species-rich, well managed site. Initial results are expected soon.

Yew trees
Many churchyards provide sanctuary to our oldest yew trees - Britain contains one of the world’s greatest collections of ancient yews, with well over half of our total population being found within churchyards. Around 800 yews with an age of above 600 years have been recorded in churchyards across England and Wales.
Some yew trees are believed to be over 2000 years old and there is no known limit to how old they could live.

Fungi
Country churchyards and urban cemeteries are among the best places to find a variety of fungi, particularly grassland ones. This is because these fungi thrive in old undisturbed grassland which has not been ploughed, reseeded or treated with chemicals. Waxcaps, fairy clubs, coral fungi are amongst the colourful and interesting fungi that can flourish.

Birds
Burial grounds often have a mixture of tree types – which is really valuable to birds that raise several broods in a breeding season. These birds have to start early so may use a conifer as a nesting site for the first nest, when deciduous trees are leafless, and may then switch to the deciduous trees later in the season.

Many sites offer a wealth of nesting, feeding and roosting opportunities– think of the external building walls with buttresses, gargoyles, ledges, porches, towers, spires, along with moss and ivy covered boundary walls.... the list goes on!

We have been working with many site managers - firstly to help ensure that building renovation work doesn’t remove swift nesting places and secondly to increase nesting opportunities by putting swift boxes behind the louvers in the church tower. Nest holes, nest boxes or swift bricks can be fitted into and onto buildings (including listed ones) without difficulty.

Lichen
As natural outcrops of rock and stone have decreased over the years, churchyards have become of supreme importance for lichen conservation. Of the 1700 British species, over a third have been found in burial grounds and many sites have well over 100 species on the stonework, on trees and in the grassland.

Burial grounds support many species of lichen for a variety of reasons – the different rocks and building materials can have distinctive lichen communities: limestone, sandstone, marble, mortar etc. Also, the stonework varies from rough to smooth, shaded to exposed, damp to dry, horizontal to vertical. All of these provide different niches for lichens. The lichens on the shaded north side of a wall are different from those on the sunny south side.

Needless to say well managed burial grounds can support a diverse range of wildlife, including mammals, invertebrates, reptiles and amphibians. However, describing the full extent of the wildlife that thrives in these sites would require an article much longer than this!

Getting burial grounds on the map
Despite offering such rich biodiversity little data is publicly available about these amazing places. Over the past four years we have been working with some Local Record Centres and the National Biodiversity Network and there is now a Burial Ground Atlas. Experienced recorders and the general public can contribute to recording and sharing information on the species they see. So far records from over 6,000 sites have been submitted with over 10,000 species recorded. This data can be used to help celebrate the wildlife found, protect what is there and inform and improve management.

Raising awareness during Love your Burial Ground Week and Churches Count on Nature 2023 (Saturday 3rd – Sunday 11th of June)
Love your Burial Ground Week is a celebratory week which Caring for God’s Acre has been running for many years. During the week we encourage those who help to look after churchyards, chapel yards and cemeteries to celebrate these fantastic places in any way they choose – ranging from events focusing on the built heritage to activities that involve recording wildlife. In the last two years over 900 events have taken place and 27,000 records have been sent in. We have set up a ‘Beautiful Burial Ground Project’ on iNaturalist to help people with identification and sending in records.

We have been raising awareness about the importance of conserving burial grounds for over two decades and much progress has been made. As well as continuing to do this, we are now also focusing on initiatives that utilize these sites as focal points for wildlife to disperse out from - into our verges, gardens, and the broader countryside and urban landscape.

Handy links:
Caring for God’s Acre
Recording plants and animals - how to use iNaturalist
NBN Burial Ground Atlas
More about LYBG week
Map of LYBG registered events and activities 2023

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