Fungi foragers hidden away in Wardsend Cemetery

Autumn is the season for fungi walks and Chris and her colleagues had joined around 30 other mushroom enthusiasts to follow her fellow Sorby member Ziggy Senkans on a recent expedition to the old Victorian cemetery at the north of Parkwood Springs, hidden away on Livesey Street behind the Owlerton stadium.

“It’s one of my favourite places for a fungi walk,” said Ziggy. “It’s such a mix of habitats, there’s woodland growing over the graves, there’s acid grassland at the top, and over the railway there’s a hillside of bracken, it’s got a bit of everything.”

“I love the wildness of Wardsend,” said Howard Bayley of the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery. “It’s one of the things that makes it unique.”

Tomorrow (Friday 11th) , Howard and colleagues will welcome students of Sheffield College, South Yorkshire Police, local councillors and others to the special public annual remembrance service at the cemetery, starting at 10.45.

Work by volunteers and the Victoria Cross Trust helped tidy and mark the war graves of 16 men buried at the cemetery, whose graves had deteriorated over the years until the place of commemoration of the 16 soldiers (mostly from the First World War) was moved to City Road in 1980.

But two years ago, the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery got together with the Victoria Cross Trust, Royal British Legion and sponsors Wates Living Space to find and re-mark the graves with simple wooden crosses.

Wardsend was a working class cemetery, said Howard Bayley, and includes almost 30,000 graves of often local working people from the area around Owlerton and Hillsborough. The cemetery was built originally as an extension graveyard for the now demolished St Philip’s church on Infirmary Road, and opened in 1857.

“A lot of people buried at Wardsend were overlooked during their lives, and have been overlooked since they died, and I don’t think that’s right,” he said. “I think we should do something to remember them.”

Local schools and students are already using the site, for historical and ecological research, and Howard hopes before long the Friends will be able to open a small educational building, with a simple basic classroom and hopefully toilets, to help more local researchers and schoolchildren visit.

Although it’s hidden away at the northern end of the long Shirecliffe hillside, he stresses the site is still part of Parkwood Springs, and he said the Friends of Wardsend are hopeful the investment on the south of Parkwood Springs will extend north.

He added the planned Upper Don Trail along the Don would also help open the city’s eyes to Wardsend. He has good relations with the travellers currently living by the river near Wardsend, but like many locals, he says he is concerned as winter comes that flooding will be a real danger to the travellers, who he says are just waiting for a new site to be found before they can move on.

Ziggy Senkans has been a Wardsend visitor for many years, since bringing his children up for bike rides and picnics in the 1990s.

“It’s one of those sites in Sheffield that’s more isolated and interesting,” he said. “And maybe it’s something of the Goth in me that likes the gravestones too.”

Howard joined the fungal foragers as they explored the cemetery and its wildlife. A long overgrown path up the hill had recently been uncovered after hard work by volunteers from the Wardsend Friends, but the team have decided to leave the young trees that had grown up through the path over the last 20 years.

“It’s quite steep so we think they’ll make good handholds as you climb up the hill,” he said. “For us it’s about working with nature.”

More information:

https://wardsendcemetery.wordpress.com

http://www.sorby.org.uk