Page 4 - Historic Churches 2013

4 BCD Special Report on Historic Churches 20th annual edition CATHEDRALC O M M U N I C A T I O N S
A GREENER KIRKYARD
Conservation organisations of all types
increasingly work together, form partnerships,
pool resources and seek to understand other
perspectives. Historic building specialists now
stop to consider potential environmental impacts
before they undertake work, while biodiversity
conservationists are also engaging with the
cultural aspects of the sites they manage. What
better place to highlight this than graveyards?
For over 15 years there have been community-
led initiatives all over England to better manage
graveyards, an important resource where
nature and history seamlessly combine. They
are now far more integrated than they used
to be – and Scotland is playing ‘catch up’.
THE TAYSIDE BURIAL GROUNDS
HABITAT ACTION PLAN
Graveyard management is different in Scotland,
where local authorities own and maintain the
vast majority of cemeteries and Church of
Scotland churchyards. The nature of ownership
makes it more difficult to engage volunteers
in enhancing local graveyards, although the
leaflet Tayside’s Green Graveyards has helped
to raise awareness. Having drafted a Burial
Grounds Habitat Action Plan as part of the
Tayside Biodiversity Action Plan, years passed
before an opportunity arose to work with the
local authority and Perth and Kinross Heritage
Trust on a joint historic/biodiversity project.
The Perth and Kinross Biodiverse Burial
Grounds Pilot focussed on seven graveyards
in the Braes of the Carse (a rural area between
the cities of Perth and Dundee). It was funded
by the SITA Tayside Biodiversity Action Fund,
derived from the Landfill Communities Fund.
Lichenologist, John Douglass, together
with the Scottish Churchyard Lichen Group,
visited the graveyards three summers ago
and documented 176 lichen species, 30 of
them very rare. Astonishingly there were
also two new British records: a tiny crustose
lichen Lecanora invadens with ‘jam tart’ like
spore-producing bodies and a lichen parasite,
Sclerococcum tephromelarum, found growing
on the black shields lichen Tephromela atra
(lichens are part-fungi and part-algae and
sometimes have their own fungal parasites).
Deciphering these species has been a lifetime’s
work for lichenologist Dr Brian Coppins,
the discoverer of the two new species.
Funding a lichen survey was only
part of the pilot project and soon a larger
project in East Perthshire’s churchyards
incorporated wildflower areas. Bat and bird
boxes were included at each site, together
with red squirrel feeding areas; reptiles and
amphibians were also considered when
improving stonework and boundary walls.
BUILDING REPAIRS AND THE
NATURAL HERITAGE
Work to historic buildings should be
sympathetic to natural heritage. For example,
care should be taken when removing roof tiles
or top coping to ensure that swifts are neither
trapped nor excluded. When replacing roof tiles,
some of the original tiles can be stored nearby in
their original alignment to safeguard the lichens,
or lichen-rich tiles can be retained among the
new tiles. Likewise, lichens can be safeguarded
when removing fence posts or restoring
drystone walls by leaving the old posts in the
vicinity or reusing some of the original stone.
Swift ‘towers’ are becoming more
commonplace in English churches and a project
in the Carse of Gowrie will work with a local
‘Eco-Congregation’ (see Further Information) to
safeguard and create swift nest sites. Church bat
and swift conservation projects can work well as
partnership initiatives between volunteers and
nature conservation professionals. Innovative
training workshops based on churchyard lichen,
bird or wildflower identification can lead to
on-the-ground projects involving volunteers
and professionals alike. The potential to work
with heritage organisations, local authorities,
naturalists and the local community means
many more projects are becoming possible
and wider funding streams can be accessed.
Proactive and integrated management of
both churches and graveyards can include:
• swift, swallow and house martin
conservation projects
• bat conservation
• butterfly and bumblebee meadows
• conservation of the invertebrates, lichens
and mosses that thrive in and on boundary
walls, church walls and monuments
• local community involvement with
planting trees and wildflowers; creating
amphibian hibernacula, bee banks or
bug hotels; making bird or bat boxes;
undertaking species and tree surveys;
creating photographic records or time-lapse
photographs to show seasonal changes
Greyfriars, Edinburgh: The mausoleum of Sir George ‘Bluidy’ Mackenzie, once the
focus of schoolboy dares
Attitudes to burial change: a children’s ‘I-spy’ trail in Old Calton Burial Ground,
Edinburgh