Bootham students work in Quaker burial ground
Bootham School students volunteeredat The Retreat Quaker burial ground
On Tuesday 1 July some 400 Bootham School students, aged between eleven and eighteen, took part in a ‘whole school service day’.
Inspired and organised by history teacher and deputy housemaster, Robert Hudson, the service day saw the students work on a range of projects within their local community.
One of the twenty-seven participating projects involved volunteering at The Retreat Quaker burial ground, in York. Students not only helped clear the burial ground, but were also instrumental in updating the burial ground plan.
Andrew Carter and Jennifer Mitchell, co-convenors of the Friargate Burial Grounds Committee, referred to the students as ‘an impressive band of volunteers’, adding that they would not have made such significant progress without them.
‘Firstly, there has been no update of the 1915 burial ground plan for close on 100 years. Working in couples, the students covered the four central squares in little over an hour, comparing headstones with the plan and against the detailed entries in the grave register,’ said Andrew. ‘There were many names to add to the plan, and several anomalies were discovered. The information gathered will be invaluable in preparing an up-to-date working map.’
The students also used special probes to find a number of flat memorial stones which had disappeared under inches of grass, updating the burial ground plan accordingly.
