DIGGING UP ST PETER’S – THE FINAL STRETCH

Right, I left you last with an opened doorway and a filled in heating vault and chaos reigning in the dug up section of the garden and piles of dirt and stone in the churchyard.

It was time to start smoothing down the edges are create some order with the initial installation of a threshhold in the doorway at the same level of the floor inside the church….

….and the laying down of a terrace made up of the fragments and stones unearthed in the archaeological dig.

This is made up of several carved fragments of tombstones, none of them identifiable but a reminder that they once marked the resting place of of someone whose family had cause to erect a stone and that commitment of memory should still be respected.

The terrace outside the door is completed to a halfway point…..

…. and the remainder of the area is topped up with gravel and will become the area where the toilet facilities will be installed at some point in the future. After it is plumbed in and operational the terrace will be completed around the structure.

So what about the wreck of the garden which still holds the graves, vaults, tombs and bones uncovered and re-buried at the top of the garden?…and how will people be able to get up to it?… you might well have asked.

Snap! a chunk is removed from the brick retaining wall…..

…..and a stone staircase is installed…..

… and presto! A staircase!…

…. and this part of the construction work is completed!

Time to start thinking about the gardens…. which Angela and Chris, volunteers who have been tending to the upkeep of the gardens and churchyard beds have been busy throughout, cleaning up and improving the rest of the south aisle garden which was left undisturbed by the dig.

A rather unkempt bit of lawn have been dug up and re-seeded….

… and old terracing cleaned up and the surrounding beds and urn have been re-planted….

….and Jan has shown up with a man from the CO-OP with some more donated pots of very past their sell-by pots….

….of miniature daffodils which when they push their tiny leaves and flowers above the ground next spring will find themselves flourishing in the springtime Sandwich air instead of festering at the bottom of a compost heap…. or worse.

So now that the fencing and bags of gravel has been removed from the churchyard and the browned areas of lawn have been re-seeded….

….. all that is left to do is re-create and lay out the upper section of the garden which Chris is already blocking out with stones where raised beds will be created along the back walls to the original levels you can see on the wall behind, and instead of a disturbed resting place for past residents of Sandwich, they will experience peace in the new garden. As will we.

See you at the garden inauguration celebrations!