Yorkshire Wildlife Trust

The churchyard – God’s Acre – is one of the most enduring features of our landscape. Over the centuries, many churchyards have become sanctuaries for the living as well as the dead, where an abundance and diversity of indigenous and naturalised wildlife can flourish. Taken together, the 1300+ Yorkshire churchyards make a significant area of land that has survived untouched by pesticides and herbicides or by intensive agriculture and urban development.  Many native plant and lichen species and their associated fauna survive only in churchyards.

The purpose of the Yorkshire Living Churchyard Project is to promote the management of churchyards and burial grounds in ways that are sympathetic to the natural habitat and ecology of native plants and animals.  At the request of local people, members of the Project make advisory visits to Yorkshire churchyards and burial grounds to survey the wildlife present and draw up a suitable management plan.  A large number of parishes, after a visit by the Project’s volunteers, have become self–reliant and successful in developing their churchyard or burial ground as a well–kept haven for wildlife that still remains a place of reverence and remembrance, the last resting place for our forebears.

Each year, a programme of Seminars and Open Churchyards is arranged and there is a twice-yearly newsletter.  Members of the Project give illustrated talks to groups, both Church and secular. In addition to the Churchyard Management booklet the following additional information is available:

Click on the title to download the document (all files are in PDF format).