Last year my wife Marie and I joined Roger and Stella Wolfe on a visit to Francis Simpson’s grave in the old Ipswich Cemetery. We were uncertain about its location, so Roger contacted the nearby office to confirm the plot number. Then we were able to place a few plants nearby and sprinkle some wildflower seeds.

Thankfully his nephew from Polstead, Donald Simpson, who does “lettering and sculpture in wood and stone” has now bought a gravestone. I don’t know whether Donald actually made it but the simple design is very effective – a snake’s head fritillary, the word ‘Naturalist’ after his name, and then “Author of Flora of Suffolk”. I like the choice. Francis was an eminent botanist but, like Richard Jefferies, the Victorian naturalist he admired, he was essentially a good all-round naturalist, for example he contributed records to the Millennium Butterfly Survey.

Francis’s plot is in a very quiet corner of the old Cemetery. Close by are the now threatened Hayhills allotments. A further green corridor for wildlife is provided by the proximity of the railway line from Ipswich to Felixstowe. Francis often used this, getting on with his bicycle at Derby Road and changing trains at Westerfield for locations served by the East Suffolk line. The guards knew him well. Once we saw one running to the signal box to check if the Felixstowe train had gone through. It hadn’t and Francis was able to catch it back to his home in Ruskin Road. We often met him as, in the days of guard vans we could take our tandem on the train. One day we noted some ripe wild cherries near to Campsea Ashe station and returned early to pick some. To our dismay none were left that we could reach. The harvester, with a big smile on his face, already sat waiting on the platform for the train.

The grave is in a sunny spot, particularly in the afternoon and on our recent visit we heard jays and blue tits calling while a speckled wood butterfly was feeding on sunlit daisies. Rarer and larger wildlife passes by, including foxes and muntjac. I doubt if our planting efforts last year have survived the mechanical cutting or the disturbance of erecting the gravestone. However, on nearby graves we noted flowers Francis loved, including ramsons, saxifrage and cowslips. It would be good if anyone intending to visit the grave could take some wildflower seeds with them.

Richard Stewart