Four Bury St Edmunds work colleagues turned into land girls and raked it in when they volunteered to help with the Great Churchyard in the town.

The women rolled up their sleeves and spent a day amongst the gravestones adjoining St Edmundsbury Cathedral and Great St Mary’s Church, raking up the mown grass in sweltering heat.

The four work together in network planning at UK Power Networks in Bury, where the company gives staff two paid Donate A Days a year to volunteer in the community.

Elli Grigoriadi said the friends try and carry out two volunteer days a year and saw that the Bury Water Meadows Group was happy to take volunteers. “We raked grass all day and filled around 20 massive bags. It was amazing.”

She said; “It was really nice to do something to help the community locally and see the results. So many passers-by stopped and asked what we were doing and thanked us.

Jillian Macready, trustee of the Bury Water Meadows Group said the grass needed clearing so that extra nutrients would not go into the ground as they wanted to encourage wildflowers to grow across the area.

“They did marvellously and got stuck into the job, they didn’t complain they just got on with it. I am really proud of them and I am hoping to have them back.”

She said that as a voluntary organisation they were grateful to companies, like UK Power Networks, who send their workers into the community.