Blog posts
14th November, 2023
The East India Company was not the first merchant trading company, but it would become the world’s first joint-stock venture corporation, eclipsing even that of the largest state-run empires of Spain and Portugal.
A 1496 treaty...
14th November, 2023
We have NOT seen any Asian hornets (Vespa velutina) in Heene Cemetery (nor European hornets for that matter), but we should be prepared for seeing some sooner or later.
We are used to seeing hornets in Britain, but they have...
11th September, 2023
What actually lives in Heene Cemetery – species?
The Heene Cemetery conservation team is proud of its list of wildlife species, a list that grows in length each year, but what exactly is a species? There is currently an unprecedented...
10th September, 2023
The rose family, Rosaceae, includes many different species, of which many are important sources of food for humans, animals and insects. These include the hawthorn and amelanchier trees, especially loved by birds for their berries, as well as...
9th September, 2023
We do our best in Heene Cemetery to be informative about the work of the dedicated team of local volunteers towards its restoration to preserve its unique position as a reservoir of urban wildlife. It is therefore unfortunate that our efforts...
9th September, 2023
Partnership and colonial habitats in the cemetery
In addition to the abundant plant habitats Heene Cemetery has graves of a variety of materials and designs that serve admirably as suitable places for wildlife to colonise. A single...
9th September, 2023
The basic structure of a flint wall
The boundary wall of Heene Cemetery is built substantially of local flint. Flint walls along the coastal strip of West Sussex are generally of three types, using cobbled, knapped, or square-knapped...
4th September, 2023
We continue to be startled at the diversity that our species surveys are uncovering. Who knew that Heene Cemetery’s small, one-acre, town-centre site would be so species-rich? We have already detailed this in a series of blog posts about the...
31st August, 2023
Heene Cemetery may be small at just one acre, yet this town centre Local Wildlife Site is rich in species. Some of these – perhaps surprisingly – are notable, rare, threatened or endangered, appearing on various key...
23rd August, 2023
Bees, wasps and ants belong (with sawflies) to the Hymenoptera order as they are all related in some way. The earliest known individual of this huge group, a stinging wasp, appeared perhaps 190 million years ago. The first ant was a wasp that...
23rd August, 2023
There can be no better example of species variation than the hoverflies that live alongside us here in Britain. Perhaps they move too quickly or are too small for us to notice the detail, but their variety deserves close attention. Some have...
30th July, 2023
This piece of work about the Crimean War was undertaken by one of our volunteer family researchers, Matt Bury, who is greatly interested in military history. We are very grateful to him for the effort and time taken to produce a...
30th July, 2023
What is ‘an invasive species’? We use the term frequently but often flexibly. This post aims to clarify this.
Definitions of the term ‘invasive species’ use a variety of wording, yet all share the same three characteristics. These are...
20th May, 2023
May 20th is World Bee Day, a UN-designated effort in support of sustainable development. The event is spearheaded by The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
The World Bee Day logo
Various...
8th March, 2023
International Women’s Day #EmbraceEquity falls on Wednesday 8th March 2023 this year.
Historically, women were victims of a class system that permitted them limited rights and entitlements.
This subjected most of them to a...
23rd February, 2023
The documenting of the natural world of Worthing’s Heene Cemetery has revealed some glorious detail. To celebrate that, we have had some A6 greetings cards made, which we are selling to cover the ongoing costs of the work of the Friends of...
19th February, 2023
Newsflash (17th May, 2023): Worthing Council has re-opened Heene Cemetery to the Friends group and to visitors. They have laid flat 17 memorials, each within the boundary of its existing grave plot, thereby removing the risk that they could...
5th January, 2023
Looking for local ornithological projects to sink my teeth into during the COVID-19 pandemic, I was keen on monitoring bird migration within walking distance of home in West Worthing.
Despite no expansive green spaces for at least a...
14th December, 2022
The Friends of Heene Cemetery have notched up 500 in their on-going species count! By coincidence, this happened within weeks of the COP15 UN Biodiversity Conference being held in Montreal between 7th and 19th December. (We’ll explore the...
19th October, 2022
The memorial stone of Francis Septimus Hollis in the grave of his father, George Hollis, is covered in multi-coloured patches of lichen.
Headstone of Francis Septimus Hollis
The lichen, at 12 o’clock, has an off-white,...
28th May, 2022
Heene Cemetery received a grant on the 24th February 2020 of £10,000 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for an exciting heritage project, Collect, Preserve and Share the History of Heene Cemetery Burials....
11th April, 2022
You may barely notice it happening, your ears and eyes registering nothing of their presence alongside you as you walk around the cemetery. Then as spring moves into summer, you will one day hear or see your first bush-cricket or grasshopper...
5th February, 2022
Mosses are miniature marvels, almost hiding from us in plain sight. They are nature’s velvet cushions. Their small-scale intricacy is a delight when viewed close-up, as you can see in the photographs below. Globally, there might be 20,000...
25th October, 2021
Four hundred and seventy-five miles away from Worthing and a hundred miles north-west of Glasgow, where the COP26 global climate talks will be held this November, is the tiny Hebridean island of Coll. In a cemetery on its north-west coast are...
20th October, 2021
Just as Heene’s summer wild flowers have died back and been replaced with the Cemetery’s autumnal shades we have added colour to our website. On the species search page, you can now search for flowering plants according to their colour. This...