Like most churches these days, the maintenance of the Churchyard falls ONLY to volunteers. Unfortunately (and this is a problem for many churches with large churchyards), there are no national or extra funds available to support church and churchyard maintenance. All church income comes from parish (congregational) giving and donations, so the opportunity to employ maintenance staff/gardeners is pretty well impossible. The limited number of volunteers who work on the churchyard put in as much time as they can, but at over 5 acres, it is a massive area to try and maintain. It is actually the largest church graveyard on the island. The volunteers work hard, all year, to keep the area around the church as clear as they can and to maintain some of the key access paths.

If you visit All Saints churchyard, then the following will perhaps give you a sense of some the issues and constraints that the volunteer custodians of All saints Church are faced with in these difficult times, which lead them to have to take some difficult decisions, in terms of how their limited funds are spent and how this impacts on the churchyard.

Our traditional churches are under threat on many fronts, both in terms of buildings and grounds, as the number of people contributing to church life and more importantly, to church funds continues to reduce. Freshwater has two churches looked after by the church community - All Saints in Freshwater and St Agnes in Freshwater Bay and also the Rectory Chapel and Parish Hall in Victoria Road. Recent funds have had to be found to deal with a number of high cost urgent repairs recently, including a thatch repair (£12,000) and a new floor (40,000) at St Agnes and there is ongoing urgent maintenance needed at All Saints, along with urgent roof repairs needed at the Rectory Chapel and Parish Hall. Funding for this work has all come from local congregational giving, legacies and bequests. There is very little national financial support for our local churches and no funds available for day to day maintenance.

All Saints and St Agnes are part of the West Wight Mission Community which comprises 12 churches, across a very large geographical area and the only paid staff are the Team Rector and Team Vicar and 2 part time Administrators. All other people involved in the day to day running of ALL the churches are volunteers.

The management of churchyards in a problem up and down the country and many PCCs have made the conscious decision to manage their churchyards from an ecological point of view - seeking advice from local conservation groups, Natural England and the Wildlife Trusts - allowing many areas of the churchyard to be left untouched. With limited maintenance the All Saints Churchyard is now a haven for wildlife. May and June are, of course, months where the natural environment grows particularly vigorously in the UK, so the grounds do look very overgrown. However, the untouched flora is a godsend for fauna. By the Autumn, the vigorous growth of the summer dies back and the churchyard again opens up.

Some churches do have specific legacies or current donors who specify what the donated funds might be used for. This could be for maintenance of grounds or a specific building feature or for mission activities within the local community. Some local town and village councils might also have an agreement to maintain a churchyard or the church may have an active and well off Friends group who are prepared to fund churchyard maintenance or a larger team of volunteers. Hence the fact that some churchyards may be more closely managed than others. All Saints does receive occasional donations specifically targeting the churchyard and a list of priorities will always be established when considering how best to use the money but given challenges relating to the number of trees in the churchyard which need management and are subject to Tree Preservation orders, these funds can quickly be taken up by tree maintenance issues.

Ironically, given a growing emphasis, in all walks of life, on encouraging biodiversity and wildlife, our volunteers are now faced with the presence of badgers, who are causing extensive damage to some areas of the churchyard and it has been really distressing to discover that it is likely to cost thousands of pounds to deal with the badgers and deter them from encroaching further into the churchyard from the surrounding land.

Another consideration relates to the population of Freshwater, which has a very mixed demographic and includes (as do many tourist destinations) a lot of unseen social deprivation with families and individuals in real need. With its limited income and only a small number of active church members, many of the churches in West Wight feel that their limited resources of money and volunteers are best focussed on helping those in the local community to manage in today's very challenging circumstances. Some key areas of focus for All Saints currently, are the funding of a local youth worker, running a drop in craft club for people who are often on their own, working with the other church denominations on dementia friendly opportunities, assisting with the local Food bank activities and providing rent free spaces for groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

The Churchwardens and PCC members at All Saints do, occasionally receive letters expressing concern that the churchyard seems excessively overgrown and do appreciate and acknowledge that it might be upsetting for relatives who feel that graves are being 'neglected' but certainly the volunteer custodians of the All Saints churchyard care very much about it and put in many hours looking after the biggest churchyard on the Isle of Wight, with really limited resources in terms of money and manpower.