St John's Church graveyard
VIC were contacted by a local Councillor in 2015 who had received some complaints about the state of a number of war graves at Stonefold Cemetery. This was a continuation of our WW1 War Graves projects in Rossendale.
Contact was made with Military Academy at Accrington and Rossendale College, as they had some students on the Military Preparation Programme (MPP) who were working towards DofE Awards and were looking for a community project. Many of those students were thinking about joining a branch of the Armed Forces after completing their course. As Remembrance is very much at the heart of those who served, this small community project would not only be of interest to VIC members but those students on the MPP.
On the 14th October 2015 we met with the Military Academy at Accrington College to brief their students on VIC and our WW1 projects. They all agreed and with the support of VIC they started to plan the work that would be required. The timescales were short as VIC wanted the graves to be ready for the Remembrance day so local people and family could visit if they wished. We also met with Jacqueline Ramsbottom who has been a supporter of VIC for some time, she has researched the Haslingden war dead. The former church is now privately owned and the graveyard was taken over by Rossendale Borough Council.
After the initial briefing the students were split into 4 teams; each team member had a role within each team. VIC staff gave an overview of what was required and approximately the numbers of graves and their locations. The next phase was to visit the site and feed back to the teams; tools required, the number of graves that could be immediately located, their condition and type of work that would be needed to locate and tidy around each grave.
Work started on the 2nd November 2015 and by the end of the day, the known graves were located, cleaned and the areas around were left tidy. Further graves were located and over the next few months further research and our website was updated by some of the students.
Without the support of ACROSS and the students involved, this project couldn’t have been completed in the timescales we had to work to.
Contact was made with Military Academy at Accrington and Rossendale College, as they had some students on the Military Preparation Programme (MPP) who were working towards DofE Awards and were looking for a community project. Many of those students were thinking about joining a branch of the Armed Forces after completing their course. As Remembrance is very much at the heart of those who served, this small community project would not only be of interest to VIC members but those students on the MPP.
On the 14th October 2015 we met with the Military Academy at Accrington College to brief their students on VIC and our WW1 projects. They all agreed and with the support of VIC they started to plan the work that would be required. The timescales were short as VIC wanted the graves to be ready for the Remembrance day so local people and family could visit if they wished. We also met with Jacqueline Ramsbottom who has been a supporter of VIC for some time, she has researched the Haslingden war dead. The former church is now privately owned and the graveyard was taken over by Rossendale Borough Council.
After the initial briefing the students were split into 4 teams; each team member had a role within each team. VIC staff gave an overview of what was required and approximately the numbers of graves and their locations. The next phase was to visit the site and feed back to the teams; tools required, the number of graves that could be immediately located, their condition and type of work that would be needed to locate and tidy around each grave.
Work started on the 2nd November 2015 and by the end of the day, the known graves were located, cleaned and the areas around were left tidy. Further graves were located and over the next few months further research and our website was updated by some of the students.
Without the support of ACROSS and the students involved, this project couldn’t have been completed in the timescales we had to work to.