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Stories of the Stones Schools

Local artists Sally Southern and Nicola Lynch work with local schools to share the importance of our cemeteries, especially St John’s, as community green spaces – homes to nature as well as heritage.

A landscape image of small round pebbles decorated by children with images of bees, flowers and rainbows.

Throughout the project, local schoolchildren have not only been on site visits to the chapels at St John’s to learn about the history of the cemetery, and the plant and animal life that lives there, but also to take an active role in visualising their future.

  • Taking inspiration from the nineteenth-century stonework on site, pupils from St John’s Primary School have created gargoyles inspired by their own faces.
  • St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School made nature-inspired mosaics that were then installed as stepping stones in St John’s Cemetery.
  • Hawthorn Primary School designed and built models of their ideas for what the derelict buildings at St John’s could become.
  • A schoolchild's drawing of their idea to turn one of the cemetery chapels at St John's into a café. There are fairy lights along the ceiling, chairs and tables with plates and drinks, a mural on the righthand wall, and a café sign with a cup logo on the lefthand wall.
  • A photograph of primary school pupils' hands working on gargoyle faces made of cardboard and paper clay.
  • An over the shoulder view of two schoolchildren making a 3D face out of cardboard and paper clay.
  • Five primary schoolchildren stood behind their cardboard model of the chapels at St John's Cemetery.
  • A group of primary school children stood behind the cardboard model they made of the chapels at St John's. there are 2 chapels either side of a spire. The spire is decorated with fake moss.

A huge thank you to local schools for participating in the project.

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