Churchyards – Ray Colliers Wildlife in the North

churchyardOne of the oldest landscapes in the Highlands is woodland, whether deciduous or remnants of the ancient Caledonian Pine Forest.  However, there are other very old areas, albeit much smaller, that we tend to overlook and these are churchyards, some people prefer to call them kirkyards.   What may draw attention to them is often the imposing looking yew trees with their characteristic shapes and they can be thousands of years old.   The undisturbed grassland between the gravestones can also be very old and, for that matter, so can the walls surrounding them.   With such age can come a wide variety of wildlife but unfortunately, with very few exceptions, wildlife is rarely taken into account over the management of such sites.  One such example was a local churchyard I saw this year and it made a firm impression on my mind as it was covered with glorious pink/lilac blossoms of cuckooflowers, sometimes called lady’s smock.  The first name comes from the belief that it flowers when the first cuckoo arrives and, indeed, its Gaelic name is  Flur na Cuthaig which means “Flower of the cuckoo”.  To complete the churchyard scene there were dozens and dozens of orange tip butterflies fluttering over the blossoms.  The females looked drab  compared with the almost startling orange of the males’ wingtips and the females  were busy laying their eggs on the flower heads, interestingly only one on each.   As it happened the next morning I went along to photograph the churchyard and was dismayed to see that “tidying-up” had taken place the evening before.  Every single cuckooflower had been mown and, needless to say, not an orange tip butterfly in sight.

As for the yew trees their story is fascinating in their own right and so much so that the tree has been the subject of a number of monographs.  I have a few such books on my bookshelves but my favourite is “YEW  A HISTORY” by Fred Hageneder Published by Sutton in 2007.  Intriguingly we tend to think that the yew trees were planted in the churchyards after the church was built.  This is not generally the case as often it was  the other way round.  The original yew trees would have marked a much more ancient religious site.  Another common assumption with the yew trees is that they were preserved to make the famous longbows that were used to such outstanding  effect in battles.  It is true that they were used for the original longbows but the timber of the English yew tree was inferior and most of the timber was brought in from the Continent, mainly Spain.

We are fortunate in the Highlands that there is a book on some of the  churches and churchyards around Inverness and it is one I often refer to when I visit such a site.  It is Leonella Longmore’s book entitled “Land of Churches”,  first published in 2000.  It covers such sites as Boleskine on the banks of Loch Ness, with its remarkable history, and the church at Dalarossie.  As for the latter the author sums up my thoughts  on this church better than I as she says “At a beautiful bend in the river ( River Findhorn) stands  a building  that tells of people: Dalarossie Church, built in 1790 on an ancient  holy site”.    It would not take much to take wildlife into account in all the churchyards in the Highlands whether for wildflowers, birds or insects.  Although they individually may be small, overall they could make a valuable contribution to wildlife conservation.  They could be a series of  mini nature reserves in their own right.

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