I've previously blogged about the large area of land that is made up of roadside verges and is called 'soft estate'.
Another area of land which is sizeable, but broken up into separate pieces is made up of the land occupied by churchyards, graveyards and cemeteries. There are also crematoria with gardens of remembrance.
The Bishop of Norwich recently called for more churchyards to join the areas which are to be rewilded.
There are already projects targeting churchyards in this way.
The Wildlife Trust has a Living Churchyards project for example.
Some sensitivity is needed about fieldwork in such places, and there is also a small risk linked to the presence of unsafe gravestones.
They can be a useful indicator of age of gravestones linked to the size of the growth in certain lichens, which can also indicate the degree of weathering.
A UCL Weathering resource on gravestones.
The form of weathering observed on gravestones is a product of four interconnected factors and how they vary both spatially and temporally (i.e., in space and time).The four factors are:
- Material the gravestone is made from
- Environment the gravestone is in
- Process by which the gravestone is weathered
- Form of the weathering on the gravestone
Image: Snettisham Churchyard, Norfolk - by Alan Parkinson, CC licensed
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