St Barnabas Churchyard 

Thank you for your interest in St Barnabas churchyard, a key part of the church centre and a green and peaceful focal point of the High Street.

Churchyard maintenance and restoration plans

 We’re fortunate that Birmingham City Council help us maintain a large part of the churchyard, keeping the grass cut and pathways clear. Unfortunately however, there is big section of the churchyard that is in an unsafe and, we appreciate, an unsightly state. The land underneath the undergrowth is unstable and dangerous in parts too, making access to certain graves difficult and mostly impossible.

These issues mean that it is not just a case of cutting down the grasses and undergrowth to make it safe.  The land needs to be restored to a safe level and this initial stage of work will be costly.

Of course our priority is to always respect the graves and remains of people buried in the overgrown part of the churchyard and this again means we can’t just rush in and ‘cut the grass’.  Work has to be planned and carried out sensitively.

We are hoping to get support funding to help us restore the churchyard.  We’ll also be doing lots of fundraising work too.

Like many, the pandemic meant that we have had to put a hold on some activities to concentrate on others.  For example, we were due to set up a Friends of St Barnabas churchyard group which will now happen later this year.

We remain extremely grateful that there is a growing number of people and organisations who want to help us restore the churchyard to its former glory.  Erdington Litter Busters for example are brilliant with helping us to keep the litter levels low.

In addition, Bob and Sandra from Erdington Historical Society have been wonderful in their work to digitally catalogue the graves we can get to safely on an online burial ground management system we can get to safely which makes it easier for us to locate graves when required.

We would like to thank everyone who has linked with us so far to help with restoration plans and for those who have made personal enquiries about graves in the overgrown section of the site, thank you for your patience and cooperation going forward.  We will work with you to get things right.

FEBRUARY 2022 - A message from Revd Emma Sykes:

“ It’s been a challenging time for all of us and we’ve had lots of things to cover recently and work on the churchyard has been slower than we would have liked. However, the good news is that we are starting to progress again!

 Birmingham Diocese have made available to us their Historic Places of Worship Support Officer, Ian Simpson, who is employed to help churches with large projects. I have met with him and Adrian Spray who put the original design together for the churchyard and we have agreed, along with the support of our PCC, to start the process to apply for money from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. This is a process that is likely to take 12 to 18 months but should we be successful, we would be able to raise the majority of the money not just to make the churchyard safe, but to transform it into a space that highlights the war graves, the historical interest, and an ecologically diverse and  peaceful sanctuary that can be used by all in the local community as well as honouring the memory of those laid to rest there. Whilst the time scale seems lengthy, it doesn’t mean that nothing is happening, because the church has allocated money to begin a more extensive topological survey that allows us to investigate the reason for the collapsing of the ground. This means we can then find suitable solutions to prevent further collapse as well as provide a more accurate costing to fix and restore it. This work should be completed in the next couple of months and then we can update further with a more detailed plan of how we will progress forward.

 The Churchyard is such a significant and valued part of our community in Erdington and we thank everyone for their continued interest and support.”

Please note: During the future restoration work we intend where possible to keep all safe and in scripted markers and headstones on site, even if it’s not possible to keep them in their original position (They would only be moved if in a dangerous position or state). 

Graves, memorials and grave marker stones

If you have an enquiry about particular grave, in the first instance please contact Parish Facilitator, Jackie at info@stbarnabaserdington.org.uk

We’ll try and help locate graves and give basic information if we have it.  Please note however, if you need us to research further information via the Diocese for example, there is an administrative charge of £31 per hour made payable to the church.  This is a standard Parochial Church Council fee as determined by the Church of England’s governing body, the General Synod and Parliament.