Burton, and a small horseshoe of villages around it.
Burton is a village on the eastern edge of Christchurch, in Dorset. It sits between the River Avon to the north and the salt-marsh of Stanpit to the south. The parish was carved out of Christchurch in 1843; the church of St Luke was built in 1875, on a small hill above the Burton Road. Our churchyard lies in two parts — an older walled section closer to the church, and a small twentieth-century extension on the north side.
The vast majority of our volunteers live within a four-mile horseshoe — Burton itself, Bransgore, Sopley, Winkton, Hurn, Highcliffe, and the eastern edge of Christchurch. We occasionally have travellers from further afield: a botany student from Bournemouth, a retired clergyman from Salisbury, a couple from Dorchester who walked the South West Coast Path and stopped to ask if they could help. We always say yes.
The people who use the churchyard are not always the people who maintain it. We try to keep one in mind as we work for the other. The bereaved come quietly, often early in the morning. The walkers come in the afternoon. The school children come once a year, with their teacher, to do brass-rubbings on the Victorian slates. The lichens, of course, are there all the time.