Well folks, its been a pretty busy field season for us so far! Not as busy as last year, with the whole Trinity project on the go, but we’ve already done our fair share of driving across the province! Our big project at the moment is on the island of Greenspond, northwest of the capital city of St. John’s by about 4 hrs. As you may have seen on our social media accounts over the last year (are you following us??), we’ve been working closely with the Greenspond Historical Society to survey each historic burial ground on the island, catalogue stones that need work and what care they require, and began various fundraising avenues, including being on CBC radio/news, which you can listen to HERE.
With the amazing fundraising efforts of Linda White, Joy Barfoot, and Ivy Tong, and everyone who donated to the restoration of the cemeteries, we were able to visit Greenspond in early June of this year to begin the work with 10 gravestones in the New Anglican Cemetery, at the ‘top’ of the island. We stayed at the Hub of the North, which gave us an excellent view of the coast and the icebergs bobbing around the island, before the fog rolled in! We wanted to start with this site because there were only 10 stones identified in 2022 that needed work. Unfortunately, due to the extremely cold spring this year, we were unable to work on some of them, as the stone epoxy we use to repair broken tablets cannot set if it’s under 7.C, which it was for the entire time we were there. Still, we made some amazing progress, and were even visited by Adam Walsh and team at The Signal, and were on CBC radio live, along with the heritage society, Greenspond’s mayor, and several other local residents who contribute to the rich life of the community.
Due to the cold weather, we had to only partially finish some stones, with the knowledge that we’ll be back at the end of August when the weather is warmer to use the stone epoxy on them! Some of the stones we did work on are pictured here though, with the Stephen Peckford gravestone above and the Hunt stone below. Both of these gravestones had been set on large concrete foundations which had shifted and/or rotted apart, causing the gravestones to fall and come apart. Luckily because there were more complex monuments rather than thin tablets, they didn’t actually break, so it was a matter of created a more stable base for them, and reassembling.
The main issue with most of the fallen gravestones in Greenspond is the concrete, not the actual stones themselves, and this is something that we’ve noticed across all the burial grounds on the island. It could be due to the minimal top soil not allowing for a solid base, or from later restoration attempts to reset fallen stones, but a lot of the stones are on plinths of concrete which are falling apart due to the salty, wet environment (we recently found out that the Old Anglican Cemetery was even accidentally flooded when a small reservoir was decommissioned, which did not help!). As we always tell people, please keep concrete away from historic stonework, it is only going to cause problems and damage the stones in the long run.
The Hunt gravestone above was similar, although constructed from grey marble rather than an interested composite stone material like the Stephen stone was. As you can see from the photos it is comprised of three pieces, and the concrete base was actually in good condition below the grass, so we reset the stone on its original foundation. We still need to add some adhesive below the top portion, but under its own gravity it is in good shape until we get back (only a few weeks now)!
At the end of August we’ll be back to begin work on the Old UC Cemetery by the main road on Greenspond, as well as wrap up the gravestones we had to leave in restoration limbo in June! There will be a little public event with the Greenspond Historical Society at The Hub on the evening of Wed, August 30th, 2023, where we’ll be discussing our work and showing more photos, so we’d love to have you all join us out there!
Here is a little video about the project put together by Joy’s husband Peter Barfoot, when they visited the site! If you’re interested in supporting the restoration work, please contact the Greenspond Historical Society through the Facebook page by Clicking on This Link. Thank you!
Black Cat Cemetery Preservation 
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