St Paul’s Church has a new Book of Remembrance. The original one was started at the time the Garden Of Remembrance was established at the east end of the churchyard in 1948. Cremation was not as popular then as it is now and to encourage the practice of setting aside areas for Gardens of Remembrance, the Cremation Society gave a grant towards the formation of the garden at St Paul’s, but stipulated that no individual plaques or memorials be set up in it. The first book therefore was intended to compensate for this by recording in it just the names of all those whose ashes had been interred there.
With the recent setting apart of a new area of the churchyard for the interment of ashes with suitable memorial stones and the desire of relatives of those who have been buried in the churchyard to have their names entered in a Book of Remembrance, it was decided to start a new book. This is to record all those burials and internments that have taken place in the churchyard in the new Millennium. Lesley Baker kindly agreed to take on the large task of recording in her beautiful calligraphy all the names since January 2000 and the results of her labours can be seen in the book now on display in the church.