Vicar condems yobs (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Vicar condems yobs

THE vicar of an historic church has condemned louts who have pulled up a memorial tree, littered its grounds with rubbish and threatened an elderly employee.

Last week a yew tree planted in the St Lawrence Church cemetery in Lechlade to mark the Millennium was stolen and a pile of garden ornaments and waste, including a pond purification unit, dumped.

Discarded cans, broken bottles and cigarette packets have been strewn around the churchyard by youths who congregate there, and turf cut up by mountain bike wheels, despite signs clearly prohibiting the riding of bikes in the cemetery.

The Rev Stephen Parsons, vicar of the medieval church, which was the inspiration for Shelley's 1815 poem In a Summer Evening Churchyard, called the fly-tipping "despicable" and condemned those responsible for violating the churchyard.

He said: "To steal the millennium tree is the pits. There's a sense in which this is an amenity but it's a much nicer amenity when people respect it.

"There's nothing to stop people coming to sit in the churchyard, it's a public place, but it's not a place to be abused and it's not a place for people to leave their rubbish."

The church's gardener, who is aged in his 70s, was threatened and abused by yobs after he remonstrated with them for littering the grounds, and as a result nearly quit added Rev Parsons.

He said: "Unfortunately if the gardener was to give up we would be sunk." Bill Heslop, whose home backs on to the cemetery, said vandals have also taken his plants out of their pots and thrown them across the floor.

He added: "There's been a gang of them up there for a while riding around on bikes."