Tag: Friends of Hull General Cemetery

Eva La Pensee: A personal appreciation

by Pete Lowdenin Events, General, News, Volunteers4 Comments on Eva La Pensee: A personal appreciation

The death of Eva La Pensee in June was a shock although in our hearts we all knew it was coming. Eva had been ill for some time and this had restricted her physical involvement greatly. However, she still played an active role in the policy and clerical work that such a project throws up. Over a few short months even this work became too much for her. Eva died on June 10th.

Secretary

Eva was the original secretary and minute secretary of the FOHGC. She was also one of the founder members of that group attending its inaugural meeting in 2016. She took on board the idea that the cemetery was valuable to the citizens of Hull even if they themselves were not aware of it. As such she launched herself into the above roles with her usual skills and enthusiasm. Her forte in the organisation was the ability to be both  analytical and work to a goal. She provided the necessary rigour and discipline that was lacking in some of the original members who were moved more by ‘magical thinking’ than realism. She could see that this project would need more than ‘wishing on a star’ to make it happen.

Skill set

Eva knew that a fanciful approach, unless tied in with factual evidence, was doomed. The Friends needed to convince the people who needed to be convinced to support the fledgling group. She could do this, marshalling an argument so perfectly, that to refuse her analysis of a situation would have been seen to be just being stupid on the listener’s part. I sometimes just had to sit there and admire her in action.

She also had a good grounding from her work with various local authorities that enabled her to negotiate the very first grant from Hull City Council. This grant allowed the Hull Civic Society to open a bank account for the Friends, which at that time was a sub-committee of that society. From this small acorn the Friends grew, FOHGC? Who the hell do they think they are?

What was that all about?

At my first meeting of the Friends, Eva was absent and on holiday. I must admit that I was less than impressed with the organization at that time. It seemed to be dithery and lacking focus. There was no shortage of ideas which was a good thing. Sadly all were doomed. They were either so nebulous that they could never happen. Or, on the other hand, some ideas would have been so negligible in their effect they would not have been worth doing. Adopt a grave, anyone?

So what was the point in talking about them never mind trying to put them into practice. I left the meeting frustrated, and thinking I’d give them another go to prove themselves to me, as I was interested in saving the cemetery.  However, as usual, I was busy with other things so I wasn’t going to waste my time.

Eva as a leader

I am so glad I did go back.

At the next meeting Eva was present. You could see immediately how she co-ordinated the meeting. Shepherding the chair, allowing discussions to reach a logical end point and then summarising the debate. And then writing it all up as the minutes and circulating them. This was a whole different ballgame. Count me in I thought.

From my perspective the Friends could not have survived a year without Eva’s intelligence, drive and ability to organise. She was the engine behind the group. She put the fuel in the tank. Without her there at the beginning, the group would never have left the sterile debate of the boardroom where big dreams were endlessly debated yet little groundwork ever happened.

Mutual respect

As time went on we became friends. I’d like to think that there was a mutual respect for each other. We had disagreements of course but never on a personal level. The disagreements happened when our visions for the cemetery did not coincide. Sometimes she was right and sometimes, on far fewer occasions I have to admit, I was. The point was that both of us wanted the best for cemetery and it was just the ‘how’ rather than the ‘why’ which set us apart for a few moments. She was also someone who could recognise when a colleague was overextended.

My forgetfulness and how Eva saved me

One instance of this happening was when Eva had arranged a visit to the cemetery of a group of Hull University students. Eva asked me if I could guide them on the day and I agreed. I knew I had other things on my plate at the time. I probably thought my plans were much more important so the event was filed away in my mind but not in my diary.

The result was as you would expect. I forgot all about it and only later that day, hours after I should have been there, did I remember. I rang Eva to apologise. She said that I shouldn’t worry as she had realised I was up to my neck with things and she had gone along, ‘just in case’. At the next Friends meeting I explained my failure to the rest of the group and how Eva had rescued the group’s good name. Eva sat there quietly while I finished and then said she had planned to attend anyway to help me.

Afterwards

After the meeting she quietly said to me that I had no need to let the others know as she knew I was doing lots of work that many of the other members were not. I said I was raised to ‘own up’ if I had done wrong. She just looked at me and silently shook her head. I occasionally brought up this episode at future meetings as a kind of running joke between Eva and myself.  To see Eva smile and tell me, in a mockingly severe tone, to ‘let it go, Peter’ and ‘that she hoped I would try harder in future,’ were some moments I truly treasure of this remarkable lady.

Books

Let’s never forget that it was Eva who prompted Bill and myself to write the books on and for the cemetery. She invited us to her house where Clive, her husband, ran through how one could publish books on Amazon without any start up costs. Although neither Bill nor myself were sure about whether we were ‘author’ material we set to. The result as I detailed in an email to the FOHGC last December was that we had sold 774 books and made, for the FOHGC, over £2000.

None of this would have happened without the gentle nudging of Eva.

Her past

I remember another occasion when Barbara and myself arranged to attend a walk given by Paul Schofield around the historic  sites of Primitive Methodism in Hull one evening. Eva was also going and we met up. Later, after the walk, and as with all Paul’s walks it ended with a visit to a pub, we sat and talked. She told us of her childhood in war torn Germany and her experiences which had obviously shaped her views on many things.

I thought at the time how she was, to coin a phrase, ‘ so well-balanced’ after that trauma. She could have given lessons in humanity and co-existence to some of our present politicians who still feel the need to ‘re-fight’ the Second World War to appeal to the baser instincts of society. Here was a woman who’d seen those ‘baser instincts’ as a child and had no desire to have them inflicted upon others today.

Our loss

The Friends has lost one of its guiding lights. I have lost a good, true friend as I know all the others in the Friends group have too.

A greater loss than ours

Our thoughts go out to her husband Clive, her daughters Annemarie and Louise and their partners. Of course one must not forget Eva’s grandchildren. They were a joy to her later years.

Our loss is minimal to all of theirs and cannot compare at all. As Clive said at the funeral, Eva’s last words to him were, ‘We go in different directions now’. I can only guess that without that guiding light of Eva showing the right direction all pathways will remain dark for a while.

Eva and Clive

 

FOHGC? Who the hell do they think they are?

by Pete Lowdenin General, History, News, Volunteers

FOHGC? Who the hell do they think they are?

Perhaps a little over the top as a headline, but what with the recent furore on the Facebook site, it’s probably time to clear the mystique around this shadowy group and their intentions.This is a short account of how the FOHGC arrived at this point. I hope it proves informative.

Firstly, let’s go back in time a little. The FOHGC is not the first group that wants to protect the cemetery from the various problems that it suffers from. By my reckoning it’s at least the third incarnation, and there may well have been a fourth in the early 1990’s but I have had difficulty tracing anything about that grouping.

I intend to write a fuller history of the original grouping for the site in the future. This grouping was known as The Spring Bank Cemetery Action Group. Full of interesting characters it deserves a chapter in itself.

2007

The middle group was a short run affair. It was begun in November 2007 from a general meeting attended by councillors and council officers. At the meeting 18 residents of the area turned up. Unlike today, after a decade of austerity induced cuts to council funding, the proposals were quite generous. Big plans were formulated. A gravel company was approached for costings to gravel the paths. Litter bins were to be installed, bulbs were to be planted, trees cut back and new tree species were to be introduced. The group produced a constitution and a membership scheme. A representative of the Brownies said that their group, as well as the Girl Guides, would maintain the site! 

And then, just as suddenly as it appeared, it just quietly disappeared. There’s no record of it having done anything. This example shows how fragile such groups are. It had Council support and great plans. Sadly, none of this helped. Now what factor is different this time? The FOHGC has the ‘troops on the ground’; work, both physical and mental, has been carried out over the past few years, and not just talked about. The results becoming evident to the general public, this has resulted in more people becoming involved. The FOHGC hopes to build an organisation that will maintain the site when some of us are no longer able to do the ‘heavy-lifting’. 

Small beginnings

The present group was begun in 2015. However the reason why the FOHGC started was quite simple really. John Scotney, the chair of the Hull Civic Society, was approached by his son, who often walked his dog in the cemetery. John’s son said that the cemetery was a disgrace with all of the litter and fly-tipping on the site. John went along to have a look. Here’s a sample of what he found.

Hull General Cemetery, near the gates, summer 2014

As you can see in the photograph he took, it wasn’t a pretty sight. This experience prompted him to contact Sonja Boemer-Christiansen, a fellow Hull Civic Society member. She had also shown an interest in reviving the cemetery and lived locally, so visited the site on a regular basis. She also offered her home to be the site of the first informal meetings of the fledgling Friends group.

Within a short space of time the Ward councillors became involved. Eva La Pensee was recruited to be the secretary. Other people involved around this time were Alan Deighton, who wrote the introductory leaflet that served the group well at the beginning. He was also the driving force behind the leaflet that described a guided walk through the cemetery. Lisa Hewson was also heavily involved at this time taking on the role of communications and Andrew Palfreman represented the Quaker burial ground with Chris Coulson. 

Dipping my toe in

That autumn of 2015, responding to seeing a contact number in the Hull Civic Society newsletter, I spoke to John Scotney. I told him I had written an article on how the Hull General Cemetery began. I asked him did he want to publish it in the newsletter with the hope it could recruit more people to the cause. He said yes. So I sent it along to him and he still said yes after reading it.

We met up in the October of that year at Planet Coffee. John said he’d publish the article as soon as he could find the space in the newsletter, as it was a long piece. It was published in June 2016 This intervention on my part led me to be enlisted on the FOHGC mailing list. So my involvement with the FOHGC began in July 2016 but admittedly from a distance. Being someone who shuns ‘clubs’ or ‘groups’ on the Groucho Marx basis that any group that would have me as a member was something I should avoid, I didn’t dash to become involved.

Raising the profile: First steps

Another reason for my tardiness was that the FOHGC‘s aims appeared confused to me at that time. It devoted considerable time and effort to restoring the Edward Booth headstone that lies in Western Cemetery. A worthwhile project, and successfully completed, but not in Hull General Cemetery.

Of more importance to my mind was that the first guided walk of the cemetery took place. This was the first  since Chris Ketchell’s famous one in 2000, illustrated below. It was led by John Scotney as part of the Heritage Open Days of that year. The cemetery had begun to have its profile raised. It was returning to life.

Chris Ketchell walk July 2000

Another important event took place the next month. Hull City Council made £1600 available to the group to pay for two display boards and the production of the guided walk leaflet mentioned above. Effectively Hull City Council, the landowners, were showing support. It could only augur well for the future.

The display boards may yet turn up, who knows? Their original settings were the infamous ‘Blue Container’ and the old laundry wall leading through to the all-weather pitch near Thoresby Street. Neither of those sites exist any more so a rethink on that issue is probably necessary.

Depart

A more pertinent issue was on the horizon. Hull’s City of Culture programme included Hull General Cemetery but for all the wrong reasons. The theatre group Circa performed a production entitled ‘Depart’ in the cemetery. This involved some aerial ballet in the trees overlooking parts of the cemetery. On the whole it was well attended, and as Martin Green, the Chief Executive of the Hull City of Culture told the BBC, in response to some criticisms from members of the public,

“That might be the impression but this is contemporary circus, which is best described as beautiful, aerial dance. No-one is going to be standing on any graves but it is a piece that responds to cemeteries and what they are for.”

Most of the audience were indeed standing on people’s graves. The heavy equipment, needed for the theatre group to complete its performance safely, caused considerable damage to the paths and yes, people’s graves. So that reply from Martin was a little disingenuous. The cemetery was not celebrated; it was simply used as a backdrop. The headstones and the people buried there were used as part of a Hammer Horror-like setting for the artists to perform. Would this have been allowed in the Western or Northern Cemeteries? 

The Council approved this event. However, in defence of the Council, it wanted the cultural events during that year to be spread across the city rather than be concentrated into the city centre. I would suggest that this was the reason why the Council approved it. If the theatre troupe approached them now I believe there would be a different response.

Social media and the Internet

A Facebook site was set up, as well as a website. The Facebook site attracted a lot of interest whilst the website languished. A plan to attract volunteers via a series of Activity Days was put into practice. However four days a year to remove the rubbish that constantly appeared was never going to do more than scrape the surface of the problem.

By September 2017, a bank account had been set up and the trail guide had been published. It was also the first meeting I attended. It was also the last by Alan Deighton who delivered the Guided Walk leaflet to the meeting and left. Was it something I said? No, it was nothing to do with me, thank heavens. He wanted to devote more time to the Carnegie Heritage Trust. You can, if you’re not very careful, spread yourself mightily thin. He’d recognised this and walked away.

Guided walk leaflet

Revolving door

This is a recurrent theme of the FOHGC. People come and people go. As Arthur Lee of Love sang back in 1967, ‘And for every happy hello, there will be goodbye’ and that sums it up really. People join for whatever reason, attend, give their all, and then move on. Sometimes these people re-appear. Sometimes they don’t, having found another project that takes up their time.

Although this may appear, on the face of it, quite chaotic, what it does do is keep the FOHGC fresh, bubbling with ideas and enthusiastic to tackle the tasks ahead. That is why the FOHGC have always allowed an open forum aspect to the group membership. People aren’t elected and then sit there, seat blocking for years, without contributing anything. We don’t exist for the pleasure of being important and going to meetings. Far from it. We exist to help the cemetery.

The downside to that is that meetings, as meetings can do, may last for a long while if everyone who attends wants to have their say.  So, although there is no restriction to who becomes members, it is also beholden upon them to realise when their time is up, and vacate their chairs. There’s always someone else who wants to attend, armed with a good idea and a bagful of enthusiasm.

Be warned though, many good ideas have failed in that cockpit of the meeting. Floundering on the twin rocks of scant resources and common sense. And that’s without taking into account that the FOHGC is simply an interest group that the landowner, Hull City Council, favours. Some ‘good ideas’ can rapidly lose us that patronage. So, bring them into the ‘kitchen’ but don’t be disappointed if they don’t make it to the table.

Over the years many members have moved on, Here are just some of them in no particular order; Stephen Hackett, Jan Fillinger, Chris Coulson, Andrew Palfreman, John Robinson, Lisa Hewson, Sonja Boemer-Christiansen and, of course, myself twice! I’m sure there will be others in the future. The only constant is the cemetery and that’s how it should be. The cemetery is why we are there and it is, of course, the star of the show.

The future

I’m sure all of you can appreciate that I’m reluctant to forecast much about the future. I’m writing this at the tail end of another lockdown due to the Covid 19 pandemic. ‘Nuff said. Where the FOHGC, and more importantly, the Hull General Cemetery will be in a year’s time, never mind a longer period is open to question. In what has been a remarkable last couple of years the FOHGC has been the recipient of grants from local charities, as well as all of the proceeds from a few books written about the cemetery. In essence, with little to no overheads, its finances are in good shape. And this is without a regular income stream that a membership scheme could provide.

That idea could indeed be the next step. However, to undertake that, the FOHGC would need to be established on a much more professional footing. It would need a constitution, and from that premise would stem elections, to provide its committee members. Those elections would need to be undertaken every year at an Annual General Meeting attended by the membership. If we explored becoming a charity other things would have to happen. The accounts would need to be verified by the Charity Commission and a firm of auditors. However, by becoming a charity it could enhance our income and provide other benefits.

That’s just the start but it’s a possibility. Other Cemetery Friends groups have done so and thrived. Here’s a couple of shots of Nunhead Cemetery’s Open Day 2019. Now imagine that in Hull General Cemetery. Nunhead, of course, is one of the Magnificent Seven in London. They have been holding open days, complete with stalls, since the late 1980’s so we’ve got some ground to make up. But there’s no reason why we can’t be ambitious and think ahead.

Nunhead open day 2019

Nunhead open day 2019

However, my opinion is that more groundwork needs to be done first before that jump takes place. Links to local schools should be strengthened so that kids are in there as part of their education and grow up respecting the site. Local businesses such as bars and cafes on Princes Avenue should have the guided walks and other information leaflets made available to them. This could encourage some of the public to saunter along to the cemetery on a summer’s afternoon after a late lunch and enjoy its attractions.

More organised guided walks should take place, not just on the subject of the dead inhabitants of the cemetery, but on the living ones too. Bats, owls, birds of all kinds, butterflies, foxes and even rats should all have their place in the sun. Metaphorically speaking of course, especially in the case of bats and owls! The display boards (remember them!) should be installed to enhance the visitor’s knowledge of the cemetery’s history and ecology. And that’s just for starters.

But the FOHGC is now established. The cemetery has had its profile raised. Guided walks attract a good crowd of interested people. The new Facebook site already has over 900 members and at least a 100 of them want to comment, add or dispute something which is a good sign. No one likes a moribund social media site. This website you are visiting now will hopefully archive and maintain the research undertaken by contributors. Such valuable material quickly gets lost on the Facebook site. The books are now all out of print but there is the distinct possibility that one or two more new ones are in the pipeline.

And that is without mentioning the considerable hard, physical work done by the volunteers of all kinds. They have, in bringing the cemetery back from the dead, made the site more welcoming than it has been for years. With all of this effort it is unlikely that the cemetery will ever become unloved again. To that end FOHGC will continue to oversee this project. When all of its current members have put their secateurs and keyboards away, they will be replaced by other, ardent lovers of Hull General Cemetery. And long may that continue.