All Hallows Churchyard, Kirkburton: Yorkshire church wins Green Flag Community award for the eighteenth time in a row

The volunteer team at the Kirkburton church took on the challenge in 2000 to renovate the churchyards, which they have continued to do.

The Green Flag Community Award is recognised globally and 393 community awards this year for the UK and only two have been awarded to churchyards.

Volunteers at the church have recently introduced an ‘Adopt-A-Grave’ project, which ensures that the often old and neglected graves are refreshed with colour and are supported by the Kirkburton Uniformed Groups, Burton Environment Group, Kirkburton History Group.

Another project the team started was a burial ground management system that involves mapping out all of their burial grounds and churchyards using the latest laser scanning techniques. The church was one of the first churches to be chosen as a pilot for this new technology created by a company of experts in geospatial mapping called Atlantic Geomatics.

Ian Gunson was one of just five volunteers at the church in 2000 and has since seen a vast improvement over the years.

“The biggest change is opening up a wilderness to date where all the graves are now easily accessible with care, and making the churchyard a place for reflection and to enjoy the pleasant surroundings for rest and reflection on one of many benches,” he told The Yorkshire Post.

“The Churchyard was a wilderness with very little of the churchyard and graves visible to all but a few visitors, a dark and overpowering scene. We have two burial grounds; an old one and the newer one from 1936.

“We have records at the church of burials from 1581 but no record of any actual graves, our oldest grave recorded is 1651.

“Up to the mid-1800s when the church bought additional land and extended the graveyard, the practice was to dig up old graves and reuse them - an early form of recycling the skull and long bones stored in a charnel house (Ossuary) so they were still on consecrated grounds. The oldest visible is from 1605.

“We are very proud of our small team of totally dedicated volunteers, who have transformed the churchyard grounds from 2000 to 2005 when the churchyards were ready for our first application for the Green Pennant (as it was called back then) to become a welcoming place for relatives, dog walkers and people from all over the world researching their ancestors from the villages of Kirkburton and Highburton.”

When asked what he thinks makes the church deserving of its 18th Green Flag Community Award, Ian said: “The sheer dedication of our small team of around nine people all from our village or neighbouring ones who turn out 12 months of the year, to make our churchyards a welcoming place for everyone including the local deer.

“We are the only churchyard in the UK to solely rely on the church for our funding and donations for relatives.”

A spokesperson for the church said: “We must thank the dedicated work of our team who work 12 months of the year in all weathers to ensure we have a great churchyard open to all.

“We must also thank the volunteers from Adopt a Grave project, supported also by the Uniformed Groups, Burton Environment Group, Kirkburton History Group for the ongoing assistance with the burial ground management system, our MP Mark Eastwood and local councillor John Taylor.

“None of this would be possible without the help and ongoing assistance of the church community and the PCC.

“We would welcome anyone who has time to spare, however small, to ensure continuity of our churchyards into the future.”