St Michael & All Angels’ Church
Churchyard Improving Access Project
Funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development.
The programme of work was managed by the New Forest National Park Authority, and has been given formal approval by Winchester Diocese and the Planning Authority. It will improve access to the churchyard’s important heritage features and is funded by the New Forest LEADER local action group through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. The churchyard is maintained by New Forest District Council as a closed burial ground and the monuments are technically heirlooms. The church and the District Council responsibilities only require that the moments are safe for public access to the churchyard.
As part of the project the gravestones will all be cleaned and recorded using RTI photography to read the faded inscriptions to help reveal the names of the people they memorialised. The hope is that the names will then be linked back to the burial registers and potentially their original burial location. It will also allow families to re-link their family histories with the headstones in the churchyard. The removed headstones will be used to create benches in the churchyard, but they will all be logged so if you are searching for a specific one we can show you where they have ended up.
Further work has seen the footpath extended to allow easy access to Alice Liddell’s memorial behind the church.
