ENTHUSIASTS are to get weaving with a story about a working cemetery.

Classes are being organised to give volunteers coaching before work starts on a tapestry depicting the cultural history and the green setting of Linthorpe Cemetery, Middlesbrough.

The result, says Middlesbrough Council, will be a unique piece of textile art.

The Friends of Linthorpe Cemetery has received a grant of £4,552 from the National Lottery's Awards for All programme.

A spokesperson for the Friends said: "It will allow us to commission a textile artist to work with local Middlesbrough groups to create a pictorial representation of what local people feel about this much-loved site.''

Wildspace Officer Sue Antrobus, who is working with Middlesbrough Council on the designation of the cemetery - the town's last remaining area of woodland - as a local nature reserve, said: "We will be holding creative textile workshops as part of the project. No previous experience is required, just enthusiasm. We are setting up a register of people who want to get involved.''

As previously reported, the Friends also plan to produce a postcard which could have an illustration of the tapestry when it is finished.

There are plans for a £1m facelift of the 52 acre cemetery, which includes a Quaker burial ground dating from 1668 and graves from the cholera and smallpox epidemics.