Exeter Dissenters Graveyard open day

The Dissenters Graveyard in Exeter will be open to visitors between 11am and 4pm on Easter Saturday.

At least 1,300 people are buried at this site on the corner of Magdalen Street and Bull Meadow Road.

This is the year of the 4 Rs - the Exeter Dissenters Graveyard Trust team will be repairing, rebuilding and re-bonding the broken fragments of some of the nearly 100 monuments on the site and re-pointing boundary walls. And they would love to meet potential volunteers willing to spend half a day being trained and at least a couple of days over the summer on some of the simpler tasks, leaving the really difficult bits to the professionals they're hoping to employ.

Visitors will also be able to see transcribed copies of the grave inscriptions and and read short biographies of some of those buried, putting flesh on the bones!

Visitors will be able to see some results of last year's investigations, including the foundations of a small building, and the location of the collapsed vault which will be investigated archaeologically this year.

Plans for the renovation of the site are now clear. As well as the repair work the Trust propose to put in wrought iron gates to replace the existing ugly plywood ones and railings along one boundary by a two metre drop.

For further information visit www.edgt.org.uk