All Saints, Barrowby

All Saints is a grade 1 listed medieval church at the centre of a roughly circular churchyard of about 1.5 acres. It lies at the northern edge of the village of Barrowby, 2 miles north west of Grantham, from where it commands a fine view north over the Trent and Belvoir Vale. The first written records of the church are from the Domesday Book of 1086 and the building embodies fragments of Saxon carving, but the church of today is of ironstone and limestone and originates from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

For much of its postwar history the churchyard was managed as regularly mown lawns, mature trees and shrub beds. In 2017, inspired by the God’s Acre movement, we began a process of transition to create a mosaic of seminatural spaces, including meadow, woodland edge, and glades that you can see today.

Closer mowing still takes place around the building and in areas where graves and memorials are more regularly visited and tended (interments mainly ceased in the 1980s). Mowing is also used to maintain the network of paths and margins which help break the site up, provide access and create interest to exploring visitors.

After a period of watchful waiting and recording of the species present, site diversity has been supplemented over a period of years with plants typical of the local area and soils. This has been achieved through a combination of direct seeding, in particular of yellow rattle, and the use of plugs grown from small amounts of native seed, both wild collected and from a local wildflower nursery. This has helped to re-build the diversity found in herb rich grasslands and woodlands locally, including cowslip, salad burnet, black knapweed, ladies’ bedstraw, betony and agrimony, ramsons and yellow archangel. Species still present such as oxeye daisy, selfheal, birdsfoot trefoil, campion, stitchwort and scabious have also been propagated and supplemented from seed collected on site.

A number of plants that have almost certainly been introduced by previous generations have become naturalised or have hybridised with native species already present. These include greater celandine, stinking iris, orange hawkweed, aquilegia, Welsh poppy, fringe cups, primrose, snowdrops and Spanish bluebell.

There are no true veterans trees, but a number of fine mature specimens dominate the canopy including sessile oak, sycamore, holly, lime, ash, yew and birch along with several large conifers. There is a small clipped yew avenue and scattered clipped hollies and yews. Other notable species including a gingko and an ash leaved maple. The site is bounded on two sides by ironstone walling, holly and hawthorn hedges.

A survey in 1999 recorded over 40 species of lichens although it’s not known how many of these remain. The church building is known to host summer roosts of common pipistrelle and brown long eared bats and the churchyard is visited by a wide range of birds, small mammals, butterflies and moths.

Whilst still reliant on machine mowing to maintain the site infrastructure, we have radically cut our fuel use and try to use hand tools, including scything, where practical. Soft green waste is composted, woody material is placed into habitat piles and we produce a small amount of hay which we sell locally as pet bedding.

Swift boxes have been put on the church tower (not yet used) along with other nest boxes , a hedgehog box and a ‘bug hotel’. We have also recently welcomed the introduction of bee hives to the site.

Visitors are encouraged to help us recycle waste and to use water from the water butts, and we welcome everyone, including responsible dog walkers, with on-site information, an interpretation panel, and a mix of formal and informal seating.

Visitor numbers have gradually increased over the years, in particular during covid, and the site is now widely recognised and valued by the local community as an amenity greenspace. Management of the site has featured in the winning entries for best kept village on several occasions and early concerns and misconceptions have been largely replaced by a sense of local pride and love for our churchyard.