Work is continuing on the old chapel. Recently, during terrible December weather, the roof, spire and cross were renovated with funding from the Area Forum.
Work progressing in a rare pleasant spell of weather
The Friends will again be represented at Wirral History & Heritage Fair, Birkenhead Town Hall on Saturday, 5th March, 10 am to 4 pm.
Our monthly Sunday walks will start in April and run through to September. Each walk lasts about an hour and they cover three different aspects of the cemetery: military, national maritime disasters and local history. Last year’s walks raised a total of £258, by voluntary contributions, towards the work of the Friends.
Our Chairman, Mark Joynson, continues to patrol the cemetery at the weekends with able assistance from Paul Smith and John Barke. This has had the effect of reducing the amount of vandalism to the graves and improving the security. Mark has also been actively seeking funding for higher railings between the cemetery and Earlston Gardens but it has been a very slow process and we still do not have a definite figure or a start date for the work.
The Friends are happy to undertake research into the location of graves in the cemetery. It is time consuming, so we have suggested, on the web site, that people searching for family graves might wish to send a donation to the Friends. So far we have answered about 50 queries from as far afield as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the U.S. and South Africa and received some generous donations.
In the cemetery there is an area dedicated to the memory of children who were stillborn. Unfortunately, the memorial had fallen into disrepair, so it has been re-sited further away from the main path towards the rose garden. The memorial stones are currently being renovated.
The foundations for the new path to the baby memorial
History Busters is a project involving young people who research, over a period of five weeks, an aspect of the history of a Wirral locality. Then, for the next five weeks the group uses the results of their research to produce a dramatized musical performance. Rake Lane Cemetery has been selected as one of their projects for 2011. The group will focus on three graves connected to the Titanic disaster. The culmination of the project will be a performance on Easter Monday, 25th April, in and around the cemetery and we’re really looking forward to seeing the results of their hard work.