Our Gardening group’s main task is the upkeep of the Quaker Burial Ground on Oxton Lane, Tadcaster (opposite the turning to Grange Road). This site of historical significance had been neglected and overgrown for years and attracted anti-social behaviour and littering. It is now an attractive asset to the community and has recently been planted with native hedging and wild flowers to increase biodiversity and as a food source for bees.
This is what the Quaker burial ground used to look like. Although the grass was regularly strimmed the edges were all overgrown with briers and weeds.
Tadcaster Burial Ground dates from 1659. As the Society of Friends only developed in the early 1650s it is a particularly ancient burial ground of its type.
An excerpt from the publication ‘Quaker Meeting Houses – Burial Grounds, Properties and Funds’ published in 1964 reads:
“This piece of ground, situated at Tadcaster and ‘Conteineinge the compass of twenty yards every way’* was given ‘in consideration of my tender care, mutuall and brotherly love I beare and owe to my friends and brethren of the church of the livinge God that in the light and spirit of Jesus Christe are called and chosen (the people who are of all the world’s false professors called quakers)’ by William Siddall by a deed dated ‘the sixteenth of day of the ninth month commonly called November’ 1659, to trustees to be used as a burial ground for Friends.
In 1945 York Monthly Meeting entered into a deed of gift with Tadcaster Rural District Council, transferring the area to them under the provisions of the Open Spaces Act 1906, for the perpetual use of the area by the public as a Garden of Rest. The Rural District Council undertook to maintain it thereafter for this purpose and they agreed to purchase and affix in the end wall a bronze plaque recording its history and present use. The actual laying-out of the area in its new form was put into effect in 1955 following the completion by the Rural District Council of an adjoining housing estate.
(* In fact, however, about 40 yards by 20 yards.)”
These are more recent pictures where new, native plants have been introduced to encourage biodiversity, whilst also making the space more accessible and welcoming:
The group has also helped Tadcaster Primary Academy rejuvenate it’s ” Pond and Beyond” area.
With the permission of Yorkshire Water, we have also managed to turn a small space at the Ingleby Drive Pumping station from 7 foot high nettles sprayed with weed-killer into an attractive space for bees and other insects.
If you would like to help out with the group please contact tadcrafters@outlook.com to be put in touch with the group leader, Sue T, and on the mailing list so that you find out when the group plans to meet which varies on the weather and season.
You do not need to bring your own tools etc but gardening gloves and suitable clothing are advisable.
Tadcrafters 