Ashley and Naomi once again attended St Matthew's Church, this time to weed some of the graves in preparation for Remembrance Day. A beautiful sunny day at the yard was enhanced by tea, biscuits and a meeting with a local councillor Alison Martin. Alison originally put GoodGym in touch with St Matthews, many thanks Alison!

Ashley, Jenny and Naomi met David again to help clean up the moat at St Matthews. Naomi is recovering from an operation so joined us in a supportive role, giving words of encouragement from the bench, while Jenny and Ashley worked hard at scraping the weeds and moss from the stone only occasionally punctuated by tea and biscuits, looking at frogs, trying to feed a friendly robin and a quick visit to the crypt. After 2.5 hours we'd removed 6 buckets of moss and polished off 4 teas and 12 biscuits. As a stretch goal we even managed to clean up the steps leading down into the crypt. Another very satisfying task.

St Matthew's regulars Ashley, Naomi and Pete were joined by Ellen on her first visit to support the Church for today's mission.

David suggested an area to focus on - we had made a start there on Tuesday - and with 5 of us it seemed possible (5 people x 3 hours = 15 hours, minus a bit of time for a cuppa!)

We soon discovered that the area contains dozens of memorial slates which we were very keen to uncover, so set to work digging the grass around the edges to unearth and clean them up.

As well as clearing long grass from graves and ivy from headstones, we uncovered 6 large graves, 25 memorial slates and another dozen or so slates found and ready to unearth next time.

Thanks to the brilliant team of volunteers for bringing to light more of the Church's fascinating history and for the respect and interest shown in each and every one of the people who are buried there.

It really is a privilege to be part of this fantastic project and we will keep coming back until all 3,000 slates are uncovered!