Come along to the Civilian Garden of Remembrance this Saturday, 14th,between 11am and 2pm to hear the stories behind the names on our new Memorial.
Matt Felkin will be there with all his air raid records and maps. Not to be missed if you are interested in the impact WW2 had on civilians.
This is the first time that NIQ have been on site with the Friends and we hope they will return again as they all worked very hard……..and we are pretty sure they all enjoyed themselves! The area that they were working in had a section almost completely covered with large shrubs but NIQ staff worked hard and changed the end of the section completely.
Seventeen members of the public joined Ian Binnie on a fascinating walk around the cemetery to visit nine military graves, all of whom died in 1944. It was interesting to learn that several of them had been killed in accidents and not on active service.
We welcomed Deutsche Bank staff back to the Cemetery today to continue helping us to clear some of the more overgrown areas . Luckily the weather was relatively settled so we were all able to clear a large section in the time they were on site.
FBEC rely on the help of volunteers and corporate groups to be able to continue uncovering graves buried under shrubs and Ivy and clearing self set trees.
We are pleased to say that we still have several groups booked in for the remainder of this year so should be able to make inroads in other sections of the cemetery.
Our thanks to all our volunteers for giving up their time.
All our work came good today as Dr Carl Chinn unveiled our Memorial in the Civilian Garden of Remembrance. Now the names of those buried in this area can be read by visitors. We were also pleased to welcome Councillors John Cotton and David Barker as well as Brian Wright and Matt Felkin representing BARRA accompanied by 4 Standard Bearers. Several of our volunteers joined us, as well as representatives of local history groups and FBEC committee members.
The Memorial is now on view in The Civilian Garden of Remembrance and on Saturday the 14th we will be there to give visitors more information about the people whose names are displayed.
Take part in some of the Heritage Open events in Brandwood End Cemetery. Add them to your diary now…
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Bereavements and the Friends have received requests from visiting families for low hanging branches to be lifted, in Section 7, as they are making access to graves difficult.
Both Bereavements staff and ourselves had a look and agreed that something needed to be done. The Cemetery Superintendent, knowing we had a Grave Gardeners session, asked if we would be happy to tackle the problem so 4 of our team set to and removed the lower 8 feet of hanging branches. All looking good for now. Maybe further action needed in 2025?
Well done to the team from NIQ who made unbelievable inroads into shrubbery that has been obscuring graves for the last 10 to 15 years.
Well done to them all and we hope to welcome them again to assist us in this never ending task.
