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Cowslips and Gravestones
Churchyards have become havens for wildlife. Like private gardens, our
churchyards have escaped the herbicides, ploughing and intensive
agriculture that has made life so hard for birds, mammals, wild flowers
and insects that once were common. The Norman Domesday Survey in
1086 listed about 400 churches in Suffolk. There are now almost 500
and their combined churchyards would make a very fine nature reserve
indeed. Age and continuity of care is everything, or very nearly so, in
defining quality in wildlife habitat, and this is what separates the
churchyard from the average private wildlife garden, no matter how
many bird feeders, Buddleias and nest boxes. Old trees, old timbers,
old brickwork, old headstones and old grassland combine with seclusion
and quiet to make churchyards good for wildlife.
These features - unchanging in our lifetimes - offer the stability and
continuity that many species need. Good examples include infinitely
slow-growing lichens on a 17th century headstone; toadstools that
appear once in twenty years, flower-decked anthills in old grassland,
generations of rooks cawing in their swaying treetop citadel, and yew
trees that may be 600 years old.
Suffolk Wildlife Trust encourages local churches to care for the
wildlife in their churchyards. Designated by the Trust as a Wildlife
Sanctuary, the ancient churchyard at nearby Ramsholt is well worth a
visit.
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