'A month's work in a morning'

The extraordinary place which is Brookwood Cemetery once again hosted CMP's autumn volunteering day, made all the more poignant because of its timing in the week leading up to Remembrance Sunday.

Nine of our partner companies were represented at this year's event:

Asahi Amazon Filters BOC

BMW Group (UK) Cre8tive Space Siemens Healthineers

Signwrite Studios Valiant Tecna

Over 50 volunteers, under the watchful eye of Deputy Manager and his team (plus a group of rather suspicious but curious Roe Deer!), got stuck in to the backbreaking work of helping to clear foliage from under many of the magnificent, huge Redwood trees, cutting back bracken and removing moss from gravestones. By well-earned lunch time, 35 tonnes of foliage had been transported to the enormous skip which meant that the hard work of CMP volunteers had saved the Cemetery team about a month's work!

After lunch, volunteers heard more about the Cemetery from local historian Kim, who regaled the group about the Necropolis Railway which brought the dead from London to this vast, beautiful burial ground which has justifiable claims to be the largest in the world.

In the words of one participant: 'It really has been a fantastic day - out of the office with colleagues in this incredible place with all its history, meeting people from other like minded companies, working together to give back a little at a time when so many gave so much to enable me to be here today. It was fun but I'm just thankful to have had this opportunity.'

Indeed.