OPEN DAY

FRIENDS OF RYDE CEMETERY (FORC) ACTIVITY DAY

5^TH APRIL 2008

Our open day was held with the intention to recruit new membership for the group along with giving interested parties an update on how the Lottery Heritage Project  was progressing

The day stated at around 9.30am for current members, setting up the various displays

At around 10.00am people started to arrive and Janis Mundell Project Co-ordinator  greeted them and gave an overview of the Heritage Lottery Project and showed interested parties around the various displays

Kathy Gibbs (chair) explained the key objectives for the Friends of Ryde Cemetery and handed out membership forms to all interested parties along with showing visitors around the cemetery buildings answering any questions.   

In all a very successful Activity Day was enjoyed by our local community in Ryde Cemetery on Saturday 5^th April 2008 and, although cold, the sun shone nicely and the snow kindly held off until the next day!

The event, organised and hosted by The Friends of Ryde Cemetery, was held in support of the Ryde Cemetery Restoration programme and included information displays as well as supervised activity groups undertaking clearance of graves and reading of uncovered headstones; refreshments were also available which were very welcomed by both the visitors and the working parties alike.

The FORC ‘Activity Day’ was the first event to be held in promoting the Restoration Project, which is being funded by the HLF in conjunction with IW Council.  The day enabled members of the public, for the first time, to view inside the Old Mortuary Chapel in West Street and the North Chapel of the central twin buildings showing the original walls, windows and roofing and extent of decay. Both of these Chapel’s are to be fully restored back to their former Victorian Glory, including the replacement of the old Bell Tower in the central archway, along with the re-instatement of railings in Pellhurst Road and repair of parts of boundaries and central pathways.

The Friends of Ryde Cemetery members, who were instrumental in the success of securing funding from the HLF, thoroughly enjoyed meeting the many visitors and talking about the project plans, displaying their historic research photographs and demonstrating grave clearing and transcribing techniques. The general interest and enthusiasm from the public was amazing and resulted in the recruitment of many new members on the day.

 Visitors included members of SWAG (South West Action Group), RSHG, local schools, neighbourhood watch, community police, families, local community members and the project Co-0rdinator.

 The Friends of Ryde Cemetery would welcome any new members to join their local interest group and take part in the many volunteering opportunities that will be available over the next few months – its great fun, really interesting and nice way of making friends too!

For further information please write to Kathie Gibbs at 10 Pitt Street, Ryde IW or call the project co-ordinator on 07807159605.

 Iain Donald & Susan Campion  took on the task of ensuring that persons wishing to take part in the grave clearance activities had read and signed the compulsory Risk Assessment Forms that needed to be filled out before this activity could go ahead.
Once all the forms where completed Iain & Sue lead the party to the graves to be cleared and work commenced 

Damon and Sharon who joined the work detail had been researching the grave of Weeks how was a fireman during the Second World War and was tragically killed while helping control fires during the bombing of Cowes. Damon is a fireman himself and whilst working at Ryde Fire Station Came across Mr Weeks war dairy whilst working there. Daemon said that he could not understand where the dairy, all of a sudden did not have any entries made in it as it had be religiously updated each day. Damon made inquiries and found out that Mr Weeks was on a short break with his best friend at Cowes when the Luftwaffe returned for a second raid on town and was killed along with his mate and the the Waff lady serving their tea.

Whilst clearing the grave Damon said that he had intended to get the fire service cadets involved and invite them along to the cemetery to clear the grave, but as this was a good opportunity to clear the grave with the friends, as he could take advise as to the best approach to removing all the overgrowing vegetation from the grave without causing any damage.

Now that the grave has been cleared Damon hopes that with the help of the cadets, that they will be able to raise enough money through holding charity events to fully restore Mr weeks grave to its former glory along with the grave of Mr Weeks best friend who lies in the grave next to Mr weeks.

Once work was completed on Mr weeks grave and a well earned mug of tea was earned the same party took on the more formidable task of clearing the Gibson memorial as can be seen from the following pictures it was well worth all the effort put in.

This memorial is severely overgrown with ivy bramble and honeysuckle and took the group about 3 hours to clear. there are still traces of ivy tightly entwined around the marble columns as to remove it would put the memorial in danger of damage, so it was decided to leave it alone and wait until it had completely die of before further attempts are made to remove it.
	With the memorial reviled it is now possible for volunteer transcribers  log all the inscriptions on the memorial which will then be past to the Ryde Social Heritage Group who will be able to add the information to their grave data base.

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