Ford Park Cemetery Trust
Newsletter 2022
Welcome to the latest newsletter from Ford Park. What a busy year we have had, it was good to get back to some sort of normality. The year started with the ever popular Soup & Sweet Lunch, and the Visitor Centre was full. If you intend to come this year (it’s on 18th March) buy your ticket early.
The year continued with the usual assortment of walks, talks, fairs, exhibitions, and concerts which all helped to raise much needed funds.
New ventures included an exhibition and sale of work by local watercolourists in April, with Ford Park receiving commission on the sales, and in May the Centre was used as a polling station. Both these events raised our profile and attracted people who had not visited the cemetery before.
Sale of Christmas wreaths raised over £3000 this year, thanks to Maggie and her intrepid band of volunteers. The office can take orders, and, if you do not live locally, we can place a wreath on a loved one’s grave for you.
Late addition to the calendar of events:
The book Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier is the inspiration for a guided walk around Ford Park Cemetery to discover symbolism and social class division in the historic memorial designs.
Starting promptly at 6.30pm on Monday 20th March 2023 the walk will be led by Trustee Wendy Coulton.
You will get more out of the experience if you read the book but it’s not essential.
Tickets cost £8 each including light refreshments afterwards in the Visitors Centre.
Stout footwear is advisable and, sorry, this event is probably not suitable for children or visitors with poor mobility.
If this whets your appetite, Victorian Symbolism is the subject of our Summer Exhibition (8th July – 26th August) and we also have booklets about Symbolism for sale in the Visitors Centre.
Chair’s Review of 2022
“The last year has been difficult for many and for the Trust but nevertheless we and the Trust have survived to meet the challenges of 2023. We thank all those who have championed and attended our events, given donations and who have promoted and employed our services.
For most of the year we have had a small Board of myself + three people. I would like to thank those board members who showed considerable resolve and industry in keeping the Trust running during a difficult time: Maggie Heath, Lin Noad and Jean Northey.
Then we identified three potential directors with specific skills to support the Trust.
Dave Coles, Rob Martin , Warwick Lightfoot – these agreed to be appointed as directors and proved to be valuable members of the Trust Board.
And we became seven.
Now following an election, four former directors have re-joined the Trust:
John West, Robin Tatum, Wendy Coulton, Ian Hodgins
So now we are eleven.
The new board faces substantial challenges but it is hoped that with more directors it will be possible to focus on various aspects of the Trust’s business and to formulate new directions and income in a rapidly changing environment.
Inflationary costs, limited personal budgets, the increased ratio of cremations compared to burials and the new Plymouth City facilities all create challenges for the survival and development of the Trust.
Your support as members and / or volunteers of the Trust is essential in terms of income generation and in maintaining and promoting Ford Park.
Reluctantly we have had to increase our membership fees for the first time in over 20 years. In conjunction with this we are looking at ways to increase the benefits of your Trust membership.
Please continue to support the Trust – Ford Park needs you and the community needs the lovely grounds and chapel to carry on into the future”
John Clamp
The Board is delighted that its numbers have been swelled with new (and returning) trustees being elected, bringing a wealth of experience and new ideas to the existing Board and we are also pleased to welcome Yvonne (“Vonnie”) to assist Jackie in the office.
Some information about the new Trustees:
David Coles became Chairman of the Friends of Ford Park Cemetery In May last year following the resignation of the previous chairman due to ill health and later in the year became a Trustee of Ford Park Cemetery.
He is now retired after a career ranging from working in H.M. Dockyard, Woodside and Pridham Engineering. Since his retirement he is an animal welfare volunteer and has been actively involved with several local groups and campaigns including one to prevent building on a local Community field, and has been a proactive Supporter/Campaigner for the reopening of Plymouth Airport since its closure. He has also stood as a candidate for Plymouth City Council twice.
One of his concerns in the Cemetery is the Grade 2 listed wall which needs a lot of sensitive restoration. As the Cemetery covers 34 and a half acres this will be a mammoth project.
He says “I feel very passionately about Ford Park Cemetery and the need for everyone to work together towards the common goal of keeping this cemetery alive, not just for burials but as an oasis full of natural wildlife in the heart of Plymouth”.
Wendy Coulton who has returned to the Board, having been a Trustee as Wendy Shaw for four years in the 2000s, when she created the fundraising campaign Rejuven8 which successfully raised the match-funding to secure the Heritage Lottery Fund grant for the restoration of the Victorian Chapel and has used her extensive Public Relations experience to promote the cemetery and secure project sponsorship.
She says: “ What sets Ford Park Cemetery apart from any other cemetery in the city is the incredible family of staff, volunteers and supporters who are committed to ensuring that it thrives and continues to serve the community for generations to come."
On a personal level Wendy has four generations of her own family laid to rest at Ford Park Cemetery.
2023 is her tenth year as the first qualified Plymouth-based funeral celebrant. Passionate about choice for the bereaved, Wendy has led on city initiatives to encourage everyone to put in place their end of life care and funeral wishes. She is also a qualified and experienced grief counsellor.
As a self confessed Taphophile (someone with a non-morbid appreciation of cemeteries for their landscape, architecture and social history value) Wendy hopes to support the Trust with PR, community and funeral sector engagement and income generation to help secure the longer term sustainability of Ford Park Cemetery.
Warwick Lightfoot is an economist with specialist interests in monetary economics, public finance and labour markets. For many years he was a bank economist and has had advisory roles at the Department of Employment and HM Treasury where he was special advisor to the Secretary of State for Employment and to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has been an elected member of a local authority where he held the social care, voluntary organisations, investment, pension and finance portfolios. He was member of the National Council of Voluntary Organisations advisory committee on the taxation of charities and a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance’s Brexit Advisory Commission for Public Services. He has acted as the independent specialist advisor to the States of Jersey in its scrutiny of the Budget and five-year programme of the Government of Jersey. His many articles on economics and public policy have appeared in the Financial Times, Guardian, Wall Street Journal, European, Financial World, International Economy, Spectator and TLS. Warwick lives in Plymouth within walking distance of the Cemetery. He enjoys the theatre, the visual arts, swimming in Plymouth Sound (in the summer months!) and takes an increasing interest in his garden.
Rob Martin (camera shy!) is a stonemason who has supported the cemetery over many years. His experience in this field will be invaluable.
Robin Tatam has had a family home base in Plymouth for over 50 years, firstly with the Royal Navy, and then with his own business. He has been involved with Plymouth community organisations and projects for at least 30 years and is currently chair of the Barbican Theatrepresently taking it through a very exciting period of change!
He says,’ I became involved with Ford Park cemetery from the very beginning of the trust having, since my youth, been drawn to the individual history and insights into individuals, their lives and family, that gravestones stimulate. I value highly the essential community links this cemetery provides, reflecting aspects of this city’s history and heritage, while offering memorial space, and a strong amenity for peaceful contemplation, memories and reflection. While in Somerset, I have been actively overseeing the adjacent churchyard burial ground with 300 graves. I had a folder with a chart of all grave locations and transcriptions of every grave inscription!’ [We have a similar project here, Robin, if you get withdrawal symptoms! – Ed]
He continues, ‘My interests in the cemetery, that I hope to build on, are the connections with the staff and volunteers, nurturing the relationships and respecting the vital contributions they make. I also bring considerable experience and skills related to corporate aspects and running of organisations, having myself until recently run several very different operations and enterprises’.
Ian Hodgins was born and grew up in Plymouth, living less than 100 yards from the cemetery. He first fell in love with it just over 40 years ago, when he used to walk through it to get to school. He says, “It is easy to become fascinated with the grave inscriptions and the lives of the people that inspired them.
After medical school, and working for ten years in Kent, I returned to Plymouth and soon afterwards joined the cemetery, becoming a trustee, under the wonderful leadership of Henry Will.
My interests within the cemetery were originally just computing and heritage. However, over the last 10 years I have grown to appreciate its flora, fauna and ecology (particularly following one of John Boon's very early morning bird walks). In 2006 I worked with the late, great, Tony Rees to create the Plymouth Civilian War Memorial in the Victorian Chapel. As well as that I have helped with our heritage exhibitions by designing the posters and writing some of them.
Outside of the cemetery I work 2 to 3 days a week as a GP in Buckfastleigh and for the rest of the week I work with Plymouth University Medical School, mostly lecturing and assessing students.
My immediate wish as trustee is to develop the cemetery's green credentials.”
John West is a widower who has been retired for 26 years.
At present he has several volunteer roles, including the Civil Service Sports Council for 58 years and he is currently the Secretary of the Plymouth Area. He is a keen indoor and outdoor bowler and does a lot of swimming and walking.
He was previously a Trustee at FPCT from January 2008 and upon the death of his wife, Jan, who was the Managing Trustee, in 2012 took over as Managing Trustee until December 2017, overseeing the general day to day running of the Trust including Personnel, H&S, budgets and finance, insurance, contracts involving work on the fabric of the cemetery and utilities, monument testing etc. He was also the Secretary of the Trust.
He says “I now find I can devote some time to the Trust again and I feel that my experience as indicated above, with my previous Trustee roles, will be beneficial to the Trust in what will be a challenging future.,
With the changing landscape of Plymouth, with the new crematorium and more direct cremations, and the challenges to the public with the current cost of living crisis, the Trust needs to adapt quickly in order to survive and I feel that I can help with these challenges”.
We thank them all for their commitment to the Trust and look forward to working with them.
Warwick has submitted the following article:
A Digital Internet Necropolis?
“Modern technology provides us with opportunities to communicate in very different ways. The internet has changed our approach to many things from shopping to dating. Our sensibilities have evolved. What would have once been dismissed as shopping form a catalogue or mail-order has been embraced and it is the high street and department stores that are dying. I think that the digital platforms that make up the internet offer fresh opportunities for commemoration and the celebration of the lives of our family and friends.
There are already internet sites that off opportunities for digital and electronic memorials. In the main they take the form of sites that offer a platform for the expression of grief and working out of bereavement. I would appreciate a platform where it is possible to celebrate a life but not necessarily in the manner of memorialisation that is close to a funeral or where the words Rest In Peace are the central pay-off line. In short where the memory of a life can be enjoyed without the visceral pain of loss that understandably dominates our initial response the end of a treasured life. There comes a time after a person’s death when their family and friends have moved beyond the expression of the pain of loss and where they are able to enjoy and explore the memories of a life well lived.
Such a website should be able to accommodate the exploration of lives written about parents, grand-parents and other relatives , as well friends, neighbours or people that made an important mark on a person’s life, such as a teacher, neighbour or a colleague at work. A site that hosted these explorations of life would expect in principle happy tributes to lives that are being remembered. Yet it should be sufficiently sophisticated and nuanced to be able accommodate the recognition that people have complicated lives and part of many memories of lives will include things that explain the challenges that form part of the life that has been lived.
While an electronic necropolis of recollection would not be constrained by the conventional laws of libel in relation to the dead, it would be right to expect a presumption of decorum and generosity in the remembrance of the lives that would be explored on such a site. This should not require them to be drafted in the form of an eighteenth-century encomium but should establish a presumption of dignity and affection.
Such a site would not have to be in design terms, dressed in the clothes of solemn, bereavement and ritual mourning. Instead in an aesthetic of temperate and elegant recollection could be used. These ideas have been crystallised by the loss of several people to whom I owed a lot, as well as the practical exchanges that I have had with cousins and friends following the death of my mother. This suggestion is made with great reticence, but I would be interested in any thoughts that people may have on it and how it could be taken forward”.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this newsletter, attached to which is a copy of the Trustee report signed at the recent Annual General Meeting, and look forward to your continuing support which is so appreciated during these difficult times and enables us to maintain Ford Park for future generations.
