A hand-lettered hessian banner on the church porch reading ‘LADY CLEMENTINA I TOTTENHAM’S BEQUEST · Open day’, with a tea urn and a tray of rock cakes on a trestle table beneath.
Our mission

Keep one churchyard well, for as long as the parish endures.

Our mission is the one Lady Clementina wrote in 1959 — to maintain the churchyard of St Luke’s, Burton. Everything else on this page is how we read that purpose, today.

In one paragraph

What we are for.

Lady Clementina I Tottenham’s Bequest exists to maintain the churchyard at St Luke’s, Burton — its turf, its stones, its hedges, its gate, and the records that go with them — in good order, slowly, for as long as the parish endures. We are not a campaigning charity. We are not a national charity. We are a small Dorset trust, and our work fits in the back of one estate car.

We read our purpose plainly. The churchyard is a public room. It is a place to be buried, a place to remember, a place to walk a dog on a wet Tuesday, and a place to learn a new lichen. Our job is to keep it open, even, and dignified — and to leave a written trail behind us that the next generation of trustees can pick up cleanly.

Theory of change

Three quiet links between what we put in and what comes out the other side.

Our theory of change is small enough to fit on the back of a parish magazine. It is shown as a diagram below for clarity; the same idea sits underneath every working morning we run.

Six values

What we hold to, written out properly.

One

Small, regular, recorded.

Every working morning is written up — what was done, what wasn’t, who was there. The minute book has run, almost unbroken, since 1962. Continuity is its own form of care.

Two

A churchyard is a public room.

We do not gate-keep. The churchyard belongs to anyone who walks up the path. Our job is to keep it safe for them, not to ask their business.

Three

Plain English, no jargon.

Our minutes, our website, and our notes to the diocese are all in the language local people actually use. Trust is built on being understood the first time.

Four

Slow over fast.

A churchyard rewards patience. We would rather re-bed one stone properly this year than lift four and leave them stacked against the wall.

Five

Local first.

We try to spend the bequest with trades who live within ten miles of Burton — the lettercutter, the joiner, the roofer, the lime supplier. The money stays in the parish where it can.

Six

Honest about scale.

We are a very small charity. We will never write a website that promises more than four trustees, one churchyard, and a few hundred pounds of working capital can deliver.

Honest limitation

Something we have tried, and not yet got right.

Between 2016 and 2019 we ran a programme we called the Young Hands Scheme — an attempt to bring children and teenagers from the local primary and secondary schools into the churchyard for one Saturday morning a term, to clear ivy from the boundary wall and to learn the names of the trees. It was a beautiful idea and it never worked as we hoped.

The truth is that we were four trustees with no safeguarding training between us, no risk assessment that a head teacher could accept, and no proper sense of how much of a Saturday morning a tired twelve-year-old can be expected to give. We had two well-attended sessions in the first year, one in the second, and then nobody came at all. We stopped.

We have not given up on the idea — we are working slowly with the diocesan safeguarding team and the heads of two local schools to see whether we could try again with the right structure in place. We mention the failure here, openly, because we think a charity that has never failed at anything is probably not telling the whole truth. The parish has been generous about it; the lesson is that being small does not absolve you from being properly prepared.

What we will not do

Where we draw the line.

Lady Clementina’s will is specific: the trust is for the churchyard at St Luke’s, Burton. We will not — because we cannot, in good faith — extend our work to other churchyards, however worthy. If you write to us about a different churchyard we will reply, with thanks, and try to point you to the right local trust.

We will not run a paid staff. We have been a four-trustee charity since 1961 and we are likely to remain one. The savings in administration are real and they protect the bequest.

We will not invest in anything controversial. Our small capital sits in a deposit account with a Dorset mutual, on a quiet ethical screen. Investment is not our strength; not losing the principal is the discipline.

We will not photograph people without their consent, and we will never publish a photograph of a private grave or a family memorial without first asking the family. The churchyard is full of grief that is still felt; the website ought to remember that.

She left no children, but she left us this. A churchyard is a long, slow conversation between the living and the dead — and the bequest is how we keep the bench painted.From the trustees’ minute book, March 1962

Mission in practice

If our mission sounds like yours, please come.

Whether you would like to give, to volunteer, or just to ask a question, we’d be glad to hear from you.

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