Pipistrellus Pipistrellus in flight Photo: Barrracuda / Wikipedia Commons
Eye - 20 January 2012
From bats to burial grounds
Irish bats
Friends have been creatively prompted by a recent story on ‘edible churchscapes’ in Eye. It considered the benefits of religious grounds as a rich habitat for interesting plants and wildlife.
Janet Quilley, of Yorkshire, was reminded of a lovely poem by the late Joyce Neill, of South Belfast Meeting. It was featured in Joyce’s Collected Poems, published by Authors Online in 2007:
Not only in the belfry
(An Irish zoologist has observed that some species of bats in Ireland always prefer to nest in a church of their chosen denomination).
The Irish bats are cultured creatures:
Among their interesting features
Is the ability to choose
To nest according to their views.
The Long-Eared bats have Roman leanings,
Natterers seek Anglican ceilings.
And church or chapel still divides
Chiropterologicalist sides.
Must even bats in Ireland thus
Maintain sectarian strife and fuss?
But Pipistrelles can give us hope,
At home with or without the Pope;
And, being also very small,
Perhaps may nest in Gospel Hall?
Might even haunt a Quaker Meeting,
Their high-pitched squeak giving a fleeting
Message of Reconciliation
To the divided Irish nation.
Sennen burial ground
A Quaker burial ground in west Cornwall is being brought back to life by local Friends.
Penzance Meeting recently became responsible for the maintenance of the historic Sennen Quaker Burial Ground, a small triangular plot of land at the junction of the A30 and B3306.
Margaret Chinn and Ann Bellingham write that the burial ground ‘had become overgrown, mostly with bracken and brambles. It has now been mostly cleared, revealing many varieties of flowers, apple and rose saplings and even more varieties of small mammals and insects, including the great green bush cricket.’
The Meeting are delighted to be involved in what has become an interesting conservation project and hope to continue to monitor it ‘to see what other types of wildlife come to light’. The conservation is being carried out on behalf of the Area Meeting by two experienced landscape gardeners.
A history of the area, The Quakers in Sennen, written by Gillian Green, assisted by Patricia Griffith of Truro Meeting, gives some background on the burial ground. The site was originally given to Friends for a burial site by John Ellis in the late seventeenth century. It was fifty-four feet by forty feet and surrounded by a ten foot wall.
Local folklore claims sightings, on many occasions, of a horseman, followed by a dog, leaping the wall in the adjacent field. This might be the staunch John Ellis. The first burial was Barbara, his two-year-old daughter, and his wife was buried there in 1677. Her massive granite tombstone is the only grave visible today.
Quakerly crime-fighting
Television viewers who are currently enthralled by Endeavour, the prequel to the long-running ITV series Morse, may be intrigued by the detective’s first name: Endeavour. Morse’s surname alludes to morse code, as does its signature tune, but what about the first name? Morse has revealed that there is a Quaker connection.
In an episode of Morse from 1997, entitled Death Is Now My Neighbour, a character confronted with the anagram ‘around eve’ for Morse’s first name has the following exchange between the enigmatic Inspector and his sidekick Lewis.
Morse: ‘My mother was a Quaker, and Quakers sometimes call their children names like Hope and Patience. My father was obsessed with Captain Cook, and his ship was called Endeavour.’
Lewis: ‘You poor sod!’
