21 June 2024 , 13:50
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A cash-strapped council has been slammed for allowing a churchyard to become so overgrown and neglected that grieving families can no longer reach the graves of loved ones.
Residents say St Peter's Church in Upper Gornal, Dudley, West Midlands, has become too dangerous to visit after being "left to rot" for more than a year. In some places of the historic churchyard the grass is now so long its impossible to see certain graves while the ground has become precariously uneven in other areas.
Locals say Dudley Council did not mow the grass for months on end resulting in some families being unable to tend to the final resting places of deceased relatives. And when workers finally did arrive to strim the grass this week, they did a "shoddy job" on just one section of the yard which had left the ground barren and uneven.
Families struggle to reach graves in overgrown parts of the graveyard (SWNS)The church closed last January after more than 180 years of public worship with the local authority now responsible for maintaining the grounds. The site additionally includes commonwealth war graves, which have also been left to become untidy and overgrown with weeds since the church closed its doors.
Great-gran-of-three Christine Beardsmore, 80, a former cafe worker who worked for the NHS for 25 years as a cook supervisor, has lived in Upper Gornal all her life. She said: "It looks the worst I have ever known. I have elderly friends who can't even access the graves of their loved ones anymore due to the state of the graveyard.
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"It has just become too uneven and too unsafe and I think it's absolutely disgusting it has been allowed to rot like this. With people not being able to get to the graves, they just become worse from being left untended and it's a vicious cycle. I have lived her my entire life, I was christened there, and I have never seen the graveyard look as bad as this.
Grieving families can no longer reach the graves of loved ones (SWNS)"There's war graves there too which have just been neglected - what sort of message does that send? It has just got worse as time has gone on. They need to do something about it, and quickly, because it looks terrible." Another local resident Mick Talbot, 67, added: "It's very upsetting that the elderly can't even get to the graves of loved ones anymore. "And the war graves are disgusting too, those people fought for our country and deserve dignity and respect.
"When you compare them to the scenes in Normandy for D-Day the other week it looks like the French care more about our war dead than we do. All for the sake of saving a few pennies by not mowing the grass. They should be ashamed. Where they have finally mowed some of it, it's an absolute mess. They've done a shoddy job.
"Where they have mowed it's all uneven and dead grass. It looks worse than it did before and it means people, certainly the elderly, are still unable to get to graves." Nicholas McGurk, director of environment at Dudley Council, said: "We have received reports regarding the condition of the closed churchyard at St Peter's Church and an officer is due to go and inspect the site this week.
The cash-strapped council has been slammed for allowing a churchyard to become so overgrown and neglected (SWNS)"Within our programme of maintenance, we are scheduled to carry out strimming work within the churchyard twice a year and grass cutting three times per year."
Damian Corfield, Dudley Council's cabinet member for environmental services, said: "Dudley Council will always work with friends groups and partners including the War Graves Commission and the diocese as a collective to manage graveyards to the best we can offer with the resources available."