Author name: Richard Clarke

Two essential elements to making churchyards ‘places of resort’ are benches (seating) and a hard-surface perimeter path around the church building, this latter to facilitate a visual taking-in/study of the external features of the building – building stone/brick, roofing material, architectural style (often varying in one part from another), curious features etc. It is almost certain […]

The photo above shows a section of Paull churchyard, south-east of Hull. Looking south the view shows a section of the Humber Estuary in the middle distance with one of the industrial sites on the south Humber bank beyond. It shows that the southern part of the churchyard has been left for Nature to colonise,

Having, for some months now, discussed the issue of cemeteries as places of resort, as well as municipal parks and recreation grounds, it seems reasonable to discuss churchyards in the same context. By places of resort we mean places where some detachment from the home and the hustle and bustle of the street can be

As far as I know the only remaining formal flower beds still maintained by the Hull Council Parks Dept. are at the western end of Queen’s Gardens in the town centre (see above). Bedding plants are regularly planted or replaced, these, I am sure, propagated by the Parks Dept. In the early days of Hull’s

When considering birdsong a distinction needs to be made between ‘song’ and ‘call’. The former is more complex and often has melody, whereas the latter is usually more strident and monotonous, an alarm signal warning of an approaching threat. Blackbirds have a particularly loud alarm call which, in my experience, is recognised as such by other

The cuckoo’s distinctive call as a harbinger of spring is welcomed by those persons visiting parks, recreation grounds and cemeteries especially now as apparently migrating numbers have declined greatly, the call then being evidence that some still exist. Although this positive aspect to the cuckoo’s life cycle is most welcome, a negative aspect was always that it