As you may remember All Saints church of East Horndon, the 500 year old Tudor church near Brentwood, was sadly used for an illegal rave at the start of the year. We thankfully managed to raise lots of money to repair damage caused to the listed building, and kept a small portion of the funds to start much needed maintenance work to the severely neglected and overgrown churchyard. The majority of the funds went to the Churches Conservation Trust who own the building, for repairs and ongoing restoration.

The churchyard is severely overgrown as we have not had the volunteers or the funds in recent years to stay on top of the jungle, and most of the graves disappeared under several feet of brambles, weeds and self seeded trees. Many of the graves are between 50 - 150 years old, and many no longer have relatives who can care for the graves, so it falls to a small band of volunteers to try and bring the hidden graves back into the light.

We have spent the budget allocated for churchyard maintenance on a professional company who have attempted to uncover all the hidden graves from years of bramble growth, and we now desperately need your help to carry out the ongoing maintenance to the churchyard and bring the remaining hidden graves back into the light. The church has no congregation and relies totally on volunteers and donations to carry out the groundworks.

We thankfully have found an amazing volunteer who has been carrying out backbreaking work to keep on top of the work already carried out by a professional company, and to uncover the remaining graves, at his own cost, and buying his own tools. We are asking for £1,000 to buy tools, such as brush cutter, lawnmower, petrol, weed killer, trolley to drag the rubbish to be burned, as well as flower seeds to be able to create a remembrance flower meadow next year.

Thank you for all the support you are giving to this much loved historic building and its grounds :)

The first service in two years was held at All Saints East Horndon on September 4th with Holy Communion and a Rededication by Norman Banks, the Bishop of Richborough.

First open day was on Saturday September 11th, from 12-3pm with folk music, tea, coffee and cakes, as well as a treasure hunt for the children.

We also held a Community Volunteering day on Saturday the 25th September from 10 - 1pm for gardening, cleaning. Jobs were available for all abilities and a great day was had by all and lots of work on clearing the churchyard was achieved.

Check out our Facebook page for some amazing photos and to keep an eye on any future events :)

https://www.facebook.com/allsaintseasthorndon

Church website

Photos credit: Ricci Fothergill