Church and Churchyard Car Park Fence

Many of you will visit the churchyard through the course of the year to remember loved ones buried there.  It is a provision made by the church to the community, and we know how important it is to village families.  Partly because of the passage of time, but mostly because of a succession of accidents caused by vehicles driving too fast out of the village, many of the posts marking the boundary of the church and churchyard car park had been broken.  The original steel chain linking all the posts was stolen years ago, and the plastic replacement was frequently snapped by drivers getting too close.  Eventually, with posts missing and no chain across the gaps,  there was space enough for lorries to enter and park up, sometimes overnight, and these heavy vehicles had started to damage the surface of the carpark, particularly at the entrance.

You will almost certainly have seen already, but the PCC has arranged for a new fence to be erected.  It is high enough to be seen easily from inside a vehicle, so we hope drivers are less likely to damage it while manoeuvring.  It is also more robust than what it replaced, so we hope it will last many years—though if accidents continue on that corner, we will be having to replace parts of it with frustrating regularity.  Let us pray that drivers take care!

Hertfordshire Highways were unwilling to allow us to narrow the entranceway without us spending thousands of pounds on reinstating the kerbs, so we are considering other ways of preventing the largest vehicles from entering the car park whilst leaving it fully accessible for residents who wish to visit the graves of their friends and family members.  We are also making enquiries about resurfacing the parts of the car park that have been most damaged and which are most vulnerable to more damage.

We have been pleased to have received a grant from the Hunsdon Parish Room Trust towards the cost of the fence and we are applying for other grants, but at the moment, the vast majority of the bill is set to be paid from church funds (which only come from the donations of church members).  If you value the churchyard and would like to make a donation towards this project, we would be extremely grateful.  This can be done by visiting our giving page here to make a card payment, or by bank transfer (which is preferable because there are no bank charges – banking details on the same webpage) or cheque payable to “Hunsdon PCC” delivered to the Rectory.