THE INHABITANTS OF SLAPTON CHURCHYARD

Several years ago I took a writing course. One of the assignments was to write an article so I went to a church in mid-Bucks where I knew I'd find something of interest.

I'd been there previously looking for gravestones for a lady in Australia who was researching her family history. On that occasion I'd parked, taken my camera in a bag and opened the gate to the churchyard. A group of Jacob sheep appeared round the corner and made a beeline for me.I beat a hasty retreat! I made some enquiries and found where one of the churchwardens lived. Luckily he was at home (though I think it was his wife who was the church official) and took me back across the road to the church.

He explained the sheep thought anyone with a bag was coming to feed them - that's why they were so eager to meet me...but they were harmless. I made sure I kept with him as we walked round looking at the names on the graves.
I found what I was looking for and a WW1 Memorial in the church, too, after shoving the sheep out of the porch.

When I returned to talk to a villager she fed them first! Because it is a large churchyard the sheep are the best and easiest way of 'mowing the grass', she told me. They are fed with special food, kept in a small building by the porch door. The new part of the churchyard has a fence round it as the sheep are partial to fresh flowers... I think I was told the sheep went to be shorn every summer - but this is 2006 and the article I wrote (which was published in a C of E magazine) has been tidied away in the roof space. Oh dear...

I wonder if they are still in the churchyard after the two hard winters we've had recently. Perhaps I'll go to see in a few months time.

COINCIDENCES

This is the monstrous Bucks County Council HQ where Local Studies and the Record Office are housed in the bottom of this horrible building. Sorry, The Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies...It looks like a Reception class lesson where small children stick egg box bottoms onto cardboard... Can you tell I don't like it? It 'won' a TV competition some years ago for the most disliked building in the TV area.

Anyway, yesterday my friend Chris and I went into Aylesbury to continue transcribing the Bucks County Pauper Lunatic Asylum Admissions Register for our Stone Parish Records which we've been working on for 10+ years, on and off.

It's a quiet atmosphere in the Record Office where everyone is busy researching local and personal history so we try to be quiet as Chris reads from the register, which measures almost a yard wide when it's opened, and I transcribe the selected information straight into the computer. Yesterday it was an all-women table, plus one man, so was quite relaxed.

I heard one researcher talking to the staff (who are very knowledgeable) asking about Prestwood. (You do tend to 'ear-'ole' to conversations). I lived there for 20 years and taught for 14 or 15 years in the First school so, never averse to talking to strangers, said this. We got talking and she asked my name.

When I told her she said, 'You taught my son.' Further conversation revealed that he's now the deputy head of a school 'up country', I can't remember where. We had an audience by now, as you may imagine.

When I came home I found my class photos and there he was, dressed just as she said he was, in blue shirt, short trousers and grey jersey on which was pinned an 'I am 6' badge.

If I hadn't spoken I would never have found out that bit of information, which I passed on to another class teacher who had taught him as he moved up the school.

Ain't being nosey/curious/interested/helpful wonderful!

(The photo comes from the Images on BCC site).