It should be a place of peace and quiet, but the St Peter Cemetery has in some ways become a bustling hive of activity as well as an eyesore.
Workers at nearby construction projects have effectively turned it into a car park while a vagrant has taken up residence there. Some of the young men in the area also use it for their own purposes.
Canon Peter Haynes, priest at the St Peter’s Parish Church, who has responsibility for the cemetery as rural dean, yesterday acknowledged the various issues at the burial place.
“There’s no way of keeping them out,” Haynes said in reference to the vehicles parked in the cemetery, though indicating they were “parked orderly”. He noted while he got complaints about the parking, “the guys will move their cars out and allow people to get in” if there was a burial there.
He spoke of the misuse of the gravesite by some of the young men in the area. He said a chain had been placed across the entrance but it had been “taken off”.
The church has undertaken some work on the chapel there but it still is not in use.
“The chapel has been restored as far as we can carry it,” Haynes said, adding that “we are waiting on the trustees”.
The parish church has put on a new roof and installed windows in the chapel and is hoping to carry forward a proposal to develop it into a tourist attraction. However, this will be dependent on the trustees of the Anglican Church who have responsibility for such projects.
In the meantime, a vagrant has taken up residence outside of the chapel and has created an unsightly presence with old clothes and plastic bottles scattered around.
Haynes, who said the church paid to maintain the cemetery, said no one seemed to be able to get him out.
“We would love to get rid of the vagrant but as a church we cannot put him out,” he said. (ES)
