Churchyards are havens for a vast congregation of wild plants and animals – a part of our natural heritage every bit as historic as the church itself. There are at least 20,000 churchyards, chapel-yards and other burial grounds in England alone, ranging in size from small gardens to 5ha or more. Effectively, much of this represents remnants of old meadow grassland enclosed at the time that the church was built, or, in Victorian times, as an extension to the origional churchyard.