News From Pear Tree Green

I had a free entry to the Southampton Boatshow, had a lunch of fish and chips washed down with Irish cider. There are pictures here.

This years fete included the usual traditional stalls and displays with the added attraction of a sixties rock band amongst whose members were a plastic surgeon, a bank manager and an engineer. (Amazing what you can do once the kids have grown up!) The weather was kind and about the only things missing were bowling for a pig and having the fete opened by a member of the cast of The Archers (both of which I remember from childhood fetes in the village of Shinfield in Berkshire).

Pictures of the Fete here

We've tried to spend an hour every couple of days clearing graves, it's pretty hard work - mostly bramble and ivy with a dash of sycamore, oak & holly. It feels a bit like archeology! Most of the graves date from the late nineteenth century - often children.

I had some vague idea that we would work methodically around the churchyard but in reality we need to go for the most smothered areas. The grave that we cleared last evening had bramble with some stalks over an inch diameter!

I have set up the GoogleMap API centred on the Churchyard. You can switch from map to satellite picture, zoom in, zoom out and explore the surranding areas. The satellite pictures are very impressive and if you live, or lived, in the area you will be able to identify your house.

To make things easy you can use the Hybrid view which adds street names to the satellite picture (note that you will have to be in map view before going to hybrid - it doesn't work if you try to do it from Satellite view. The URL is here

As a result of the walk we took around the churchyard to take pictures we were very aware of the need for some serious bramble and weed removal. After meeting with the Vicar we volunteered ourselves as gravestone clearers and we got the feeling that our offer of help was greatly appreciated.

Both Mara and I love the area, our sitting room and bedroom look out on the green and the church and the churchyard are integral to our daily lives - we could hardly wish for a greener outlook so near to the City. So putting something back seems to us to be only fair.

The church has an interesting history, including a memorial to Richard Parker the cabin boy from Itchen Village who in 1884 was shipwrecked on an unseaworthy yacht. Cast adrift a 1000 miles from land the survivors died one by one and those that survived did so by eating the cabin boy. You can read about this shocking story in The Custom of the Sea by Neil Hanson, published in the UK by Corgi Books.

There are always flowers of some sort at the memorial - currently there are artificial red roses.

You can read the history of St Mary Extra here

There some rather pics of the churchyard here. They were taken with my new Canon PowerShot A530 which I love!

Looking at the phase plan here it would appear that the first phase of the site will be waterline of which the site says,"re-profiling of river wall and associated flood defences,(detailed)site remediation works;" This will work will eventually lead to riverside walk.

See here for details of the development.

We have some new pictures chronicling the life of Daisey the Woolston Moggy, we will put up more as we take them. See here.

I've added some more pictures here, here and here.