Whilst visiting my family grave last Saturday at St Andrew’s Church to undertake a regular tidy up of the grave and some of the surrounding ones also, I was pleasantly surprised to see a group of people wearing orange raincoats cheerfully doing some tremendous work in the open graveyard not only tidying the graves but focusing on cutting loads of overarching trees and shrubs, and dismantling the largest compost heap I’ve ever seen before creating a new one.
They have been working there for a couple of months as part of the community service hours. The normal volunteers that meet on a Tuesday morning have found their numbers diminishing and have been overwhelmed by the work involved despite incredible dedication over many years, there have been times when the graveyard has been in an incredibly bad state due to difficulties for the church paying for its regular upkeep. The old, closed graveyard is looked after by Maghull Town Council maintenance team. The community payback team supervisor told me that they have been undertaking some tremendous work cutting back the hedge that was blocking the pavement opposite the McCarthy Stone site (site of the old British Legion) and have done some pavement clearance work between Park Lane and Lidl near Switch Island.
St Andrew’s Church and its mediaeval neighbouring chapel is a huge historic iconic beautiful asset to Maghull and I expect that many share my absolutely delight that it is receiving some well-deserved support at long last.
The graveyard is the resting place of many cherished and respected people alongside some very famous, not least the New York Times crossword inventor who returned home and was buried in the graveyard – situated four across and six down. Sorry couldn’t resist that one!
