Grave Matters Multi-Cache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(micro)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
Welcome to my first cache. It’s a fairly short multi-cache that shouldn’t take more that 10-15 min. It is located in Ford Park Cemetery close to central park. The co-ordinate above are for the start point only and NOT the cache. There is free parking on site and dogs are welcome on a lead. The Cemetery gates open at 9am are closed at 6.30pm during the Summer and 4pm in winter – so NO night caching I’m afraid!
A brief history of Ford Park Cemetery
Ford Park Cemetery opened on 1 December 1848 on an 18 acre site, the northern boundary of which was the valley which bisects today’s cemetery from East to West. The land north of this valley was acquired in 1875 to create today’s cemetery of 34.5 acres.
The Cemetery has had a chequered history. After a difficult birth it flourished during the second half of the 19th century. The competition of Council cemeteries, opened in 1904 and 1907, reduced the level of burials but this still exceeded 1,500 annually in 1940. The major decline in the Cemetery occurred after 1945 with the increasing popularity of cremation and a consequent cataclysmic fall in burials and in the income of the founding company, which finally went into liquidation in early 1999.
Ford Park Cemetery Trust took over an overgrown and vandalized cemetery in April 2000. The surviving Victorian Chapel had been used as a machine store and there was a general air of neglect about the place. From the start the Trust’s overriding aim has been to restore Ford Park as the City’s premier burial ground by creating a beautiful landscape and by restoring the built heritage. In addition it seeks to protect and enhance the unique biodiversity of the site and to make more widely known the rich local history embedded in the Cemetery.
You will find evidence of success all around you and most notably in the restoration of the Victorian former Church of England Chapel with its superb war memorial honouring Plymouth’s Civilian War Dead, which is the left hand of the two Chapels, as you face them, and in the conversion to a Visitor Centre of the former 1960s Chapel on the right, rebuilt in 1960 on the footprint of the former Nonconformist Chapel destroyed by enemy air action in March 1941.
If you want to learn more about the Cemetery why not call into the Visitor Centre and view the Exhibition and maybe have a cup of coffee in the café. Opening times are Tuesday and Thursday 10.30 am to 3.30 pm and Saturday and Sunday 12.30 pm to 3.30 pm. The cemetery website is www.ford-park-cemetery.org and that will have information on exhibitions. These are not continuous.
The cache is located at:
N 50 22.ABB
W 004 08.CDE
The cache is a small magnetic tube with no room for swaps or a pencil. It is NOT hidden around any grave sites.
While looking for this cache please keep to the main paths as some of the headstones can be unstable and the ground uneven. With the exception of Captain Henry all the waypoints and the cache are next to main paths (Captain Henry is 2 rows in).
Once you have found the cache please take some time to wander round the cemetery. You’ll be amazed how quickly you can forget that you are in the middle of a busy city.
This cache has been placed with the kind permission of the Ford Park Cemetery Trust.
**2nd June 2010**
Due to comments logged regarding this cache I am now including a statement from Form Park Cemetery Trust.
“We, at Ford Park, respect the views of those who think geocaching in cemeteries is inappropriate but these are not our views. The project was discussed at Board level down to those who work in the cemetery and it received widespread approval. The reason is not far to seek. No cemetery could do more to honour its dead, including almost 800 war graves. But we also believe like our Victorian forebears that cemeteries are for the living as well as for the dead and we aim to place the cemetery at the heart of the community, a place which many visit and enjoy. It has a vibrant feel, full of life and joy and friendship and we warmly welcome geocachers like every other visitor and urge them to explore and learn about the treasure in the heart of the city. Let us respect each others philosophies and leave it at that. No doubt those who feel it is inappropriate will not visit.”
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures