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Living World

Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

The Living World

Getting up close and personal with wild nature in Britain and beyond.

Intimate encounters and extraordinary observations of wild nature in Britain and beyond.

Living World: An English Churchyard

08/07/2018

An English Churchyard

BBC Radio 4 - Living World, An English Churchyard

Derek Jones explores a Sussex churchyard for signs of wildlife. From 1988.

Lindsey Chapman relives and updates past episodes from the Living World archives; this week from 1988 Derek Jones explores a Sussex churchyard for signs of wildlife there.

It is their permanency in an ever changing countryside which encourages churchyards to become living reservoirs of a former land use or habitat. Between the gravestones, with sensitive care, these wildlife oasis can become an important refuge to many species. Often their very existence pre-dates the building of the church itself and in the guidance of experts we can find plant or animal evidence that takes us back to a time when the hallowed ground was simply the earth beneath our feet. And so it was for this Living World broadcast thirty years ago; wildlife presenter Lindsey Chapman introduces and relives the rich plant-life Derek Jones found in this Sussex churchyard in 1988.

Derek is joined at the church door by David Streeter from Sussex University, which from there allows them to head off into this programme of discovery. Derek discovers that this particular church was built around 100 years ago, on what had once been a Sussex meadow. As the pair discover, despite one hundred years of burials and activity, the graveyard retains a wealth of wild flowers surrounded by landscape beyond the church walls which has changed forever. A botanical relic that transports them back to Victorian England for just a moment. Not only plants flourish here birds make it their territory, insects and lichens too.

In this episode, Lindsey Chapman will gently bring the story up to date since the three decades that have elapsed since that programme first aired, the British countryside has changed, but the churchyards remain.

Producer Andrew Dawes.

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