GRAVESTONES AND EPITAPHS by Mary Hooper

 When we moved to our present house I was very happy to find that it overlooked a church, because one of my favourite things to do is trail around a churchyard reading the epitaphs on the stones. I don’t much like new graves, mind you, I find them too stark and shiny, too suburban. What I like are mouldering stone, avenging angels, covered urns and broken columns with a few twists of ivy – just enough to reveal an epitaph which will give a frisson of fearful anticipation. 
 

                     It is decreed all flesh must die,

                     I have approved it true

                     This is the way all flesh must walk

                     Now I:  tomorrow, you.

 In Dorchester-on-Thames, close to where I live, a stone in the floor of the abbey commemorates Sarah, who “sank and died, a Martyr to Excessive Sensibility”. For ages I wondered what happened to her, how this sensibility had manifested itself enough for her to die of it, and then a passing verger told me that the poor girl had committed suicide on learning of her husband’s infidelity. Also in  Dorchester Abbey, the meanness of a man was recorded thus:

             Here lies one who for medicine would not give

             A little gold, and so his life he lost

             I fancy that he’d wish again to live

             Did he but know how much his funeral cost.

In Malmesbury, Wiltshire, I found a headstone to commemorate Hannah, who was attacked by an animal which had escaped from a travelling circus.

 In bloom of life, she’s snatched from hence
 She had not room, to make defence,
 For tyger fierce, took life away,
 And here she lies in bed of clay.

Visiting friends in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, I was enthralled to see a whole host of memorials in the front “garden” of a monumental mason in the high street. Some are copies made of local stones with their original, brightly coloured decorative designs restored. I particularly liked this memorial to the local innkeeper:

                Beneath this stone in hopes of Zion

                Doth lie the landlord of the Lion

                His son keeps on the business still
                
                Resigned upon the heavenly will.

The earliest tombs to be found in churches are those from the twelfth century. These were simple stone slabs commemorating church dignitaries (at that time the only people allowed to be buried inside the church). The following century brought recumbent effigies of the lord of the manor and his lady, complete with colourful heraldry and Latin inscriptions.  

Throughout the Middle Ages it was only the very wealthy who had memorials. The poor were simply buried in the churchyard, one on top of another. This has raised the level of many old churchyards to several feet above the ground, as well as covering the lower courses of the walls of the church itself. In Pepys’ church, St Olave’s, near the Tower of London, one can see the grassed earth has formed into large hillocks on each side of the pathway to accommodate the masses who died in the Great Plague.

Churchyard tombstones came into more common
use from the 17^th Century onwards. During the Elizabethan age, England had developed into a prosperous nation, with a middle class who could afford the luxury of commemorative monuments. The richer they became, the more lavish a display they made. Particularly wonderful are the intricately carved and heavily gilded resting places of  wealthy Elizabethans, like the awe-inspiring Knollys tomb in Rotherfield Greys church, just down the road from me.  Here you can admire the lavish salutations, shiver at the spooky cherubs, count the children ranged each side of their mother and father (and note, from those holding skulls, how many died young).  

Most people are cremated these days and even if they aren’t, their memorial stones are sadly plain: just oblongs all-in-a-row.  No headstones telling of their attributes, no skeletons or gothic embellishments, no wise epithets or inducements to be good, just names, dates and Sadly Missed. I believe there are even laws now on what you can and can’t have inscribed.  I’m certainly not being buried (how could I, after writing NEWES FROM THE DEAD?) but if I was, I would plump for the following jolly ditty:

  As I am now, so you shall be; 

 Therefore prepare to follow me.

  As God can quickly stop your breath

  Prepare! Prepare for sudden Death.