In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious

by W. T. Vincent

CHAPTER III.

ARTISTIC GRAVESTONES.

In the later half of the eighteenth century greater pains and finer workmanship appear to have been bestowed upon the symbolic figurement of the gravestone, and the more elaborate allegorical representations of which a few sketches have been given came into vogue and grew in popular favour until the century's end. Nor did the opening of a new century altogether abolish the fashion; perhaps it can hardly be said to have been abolished even now at the century's close, but the evidences extant combine to shew that the flourishing period of the pictorial headstone lay well within the twenty-five years preceding Anno Domini 1800. For the sake of comparison one with another, I have taken, in addition to the sketch at page 1 (Fig. 1), three examples of the device which seems most frequently to typify the resurrection of the dead. In two of these the illustration is accompanied by a quotation explanatory of its subject, but the words are not the same in both cases. The stone at Horton Kirby, near Dartford, depicted in Fig. 32, shews the inscription clearly.

FIG. 32.—AT HORTON KIRBY.

"To John Davidge. died April 22, 1775, aged

75 years."

In the second instance, at Cliffe, the inscription has been in great part obliterated by time, but the words written were evidently those of the chapter from Corinthians which is part of the Burial Service: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" They are, however, almost illegible, and I have made no attempt to reproduce them in the picture.

FIG. 33.—AT CLIFFE.

"To Mary Jackson, died March 26, 1768."

There is a second stone of similar pattern in Cliffe Churchyard, dated 1790. It differs from the foregoing only in having the spear broken. The sculptor of another specimen at Darenth, near Dartford, thought the subject worthy of broader treatment, and transferred it to a stone about double the ordinary width, but did not vary the idea to any great extent. Indeed, Horton Kirby and Darenth, being next-door neighbours, have most features in common; the falling tower, which symbolizes the Day of Judgment, appearing in both, while it is absent from the more distant examples at Cliffe and Newhaven. The introduction of the omniscient eye in the Cliffe case is, however, a stroke of genius compared with the conventional palm branches at Horton Kirby, or the flight through mid-air of the tower-tops both at Horton Kirby and at Darenth.

FIG. 34.—AT DARENTH.

"To John Millen, died June 11th, 1786, aged

82 years."

Outside the county of Kent I have met with nothing of this pattern, and pictorial art on a similar scale is seldom seen on the gravestones anywhere. Specimens from Lee, Cheshunt, Stapleford Tawney, and elsewhere, will, however, be seen in subsequent pages.

The day of joyful resurrection is prefigured possibly in more acceptable shape in the next instance, no imitation of which I have seen in any of my rambles.

FIG. 35.—AT KINGSDOWN.

"To Ann Charman, died 1793, aged 54 years."

No one to whom I have shewn this sketch has given a satisfactory interpretation of it, but it will be allowed that the design is as graceful as it is uncommon. That it also in all likelihood refers to the Day of Judgment may perhaps be regarded as a natural supposition.

Even the open or half-open coffin, shewing the skeleton within, may possibly have some reference to the rising at the Last Day. We have this figure employed in a comparatively recent case at Fawkham in Kent, being one example of nineteenth-century sculpture.

FIG. 36.—AT FAWKHAM.

"Thomas Killick, died 1809, aged 1 month

1 day."

A crown is usually the emblem of Victory, but held in the hand, as in this instance, it indicates, I am told, an innocent life.

Other coffins displaying wholly or partly the corpse or skeleton within are perhaps not intended to convey any such pious or poetic thought as do the two foregoing, but simply to pourtray the ghastliness of death, a kind of imagery much fancied by the old stonemasons.

FIG. 37.—AT SWANSCOMBE.

"To Elizabeth Hall, died 1779, aged 76 years."

FIG. 38.—AT ASHFORD.

"To Stephen Kennedy, died Sept. 1791, aged

61 years."

In the latter illustration there are three stars to which I can give no signification. The snake-ring is, of course, eternity, and the book, as before surmised, may stand for the record of a good life.

More ingenious, more didactic, and altogether more meritorious than these is another series of designs belonging to the same period of time. They are not only as a rule conceived in better taste, but are, almost consequently, better in their execution. The following example from Cooling, a small village in the Medway Marshes, is an excellent specimen of its class, and a very exceptional "find" for a spot so remote.

FIG. 39.—AT COOLING.

"To M'r Richard Prebble of Cliffe, died April

1775."

One of later date at Hendon, Middlesex, is also to be commended. The lyre, cornet, and tambourine speak of music, and the figures of Fame and Hope are hardly to be misunderstood, but the large box in the background is not quite certain of correct interpretation.

FIG. 40.—AT HENDON.

"To Ludwig August Leakfield, Esq., died

Nov. 22, 1810, aged 48 years."

The following is rougher in form, but seems to have suffered from the weather. It needs no explanation.

FIG. 41.—AT EAST WICKHAM.

"To Thomas Vere of Woolwich, shipwright,

died 10th August, 1789."

The two next subjects are to be found in many variations. The angel with the cross in each case may represent salvation proclaimed.

FIG. 42.—AT SNARGATE.

"To Edward Wood, died Sept. 1779, aged

50 years."

FIG. 43.—AT EAST HAM.

"To Mr Richard Wright, died July 28, 1781,

aged 39 years."

The winged scroll in Fig. 44 is unfolded to display, we may suppose, a register of good and holy deeds done in an extended life. The scythes and the reversed torches may be taken at their usual significance, which is death. This is copied from a stone in the churchyard of Wilmington by Dartford Heath.

FIG. 44.—AT WILMINGTON.

"To Richard Barman, died 1793, aged 71 years."

More elegant testimony is paid by the figure of a winged urn in Wanstead Old Churchyard, the flame which burns above indicating, it would seem, that though the body be reduced to ashes, the soul survives.

FIG. 45.—AT WANSTEAD.

"To William Cleverly, died 1780, aged

40 years."

Eternity is usually, as we have seen, represented by an endless ring—often as a serpent. It is so in the Southfleet sketch, in which appear the two horns of the archangels, and the living torch, with some other objects which are not quite clearly defined.

FIG. 46.—AT SOUTHFLEET.

"To John Palmer, died 1781, aged 61 years."

In another selection from Wilmington the winged hour-glass may be read as the flight of time, the cloud is probably the future life, and the bones below convey their customary moral.

FIG. 47.—AT WILMINGTON.

"To Ann Parsons, died Nov. 3, 1777, aged

60 years."

Sometimes, but not often, will be found engraved on a stone the suggestive fancy of an axe laid at the foot of a tree, or some metaphorical figure to the same intent. An instance occurs at Lewisham in which the idea is conveyed by the pick and shovel under a flourishing palm.

FIG. 48.—AT LEWISHAM.

"To Thomas Lambert, died Nov. 25, 1781,

aged 59 years."

A symbol so simple and yet so significant as this is scarcely to be surpassed. One almost in the same category is the following, a small anaglyph in Bunhill Fields Burial-ground, London.

FIG. 49.—AT BUNHILL FIELDS, LONDON.

"To Elizabeth Sharp, who died Oct. 20, 1752,

aged 31 years."

It is easy to read in this illustration the parable of death destroying a fruitful vine, and as a picture it is not inelegant. It is more remarkable as being, so far as I can find, the one solitary instance of an allegorical gravestone among the thousands of gravestones in the vast and carefully guarded burial-place in the City Road. Strictly speaking, death's heads and crossbones are allegorical, but these must be excepted for their very abundance and their lack of novelty. Possibly, also, the lichen, damp, and London climate, which have obliterated many of the inscriptions in this old cemetery, may have been fatal to the low relief which is requisite for figure work of the kind under consideration. But Bunhill Fields and similar places in and near London and other great towns have taught me the law to which I have already referred—the law that the picture-tombstone was country bred, and could never have endured under the modern conditions of life in or near the centres of civilization.

There are exceptions, perhaps many, to this ruling, as there are exceptions to every other. For instance, a stone at the grave of a Royal Artillery Officer in Woolwich Churchyard combines the emblems of his earthly calling with those of his celestial aspirations in a medley arrangement not unusual in rural scenes, but hardly to be reconciled with the education and refinement of a large garrison and school of military science which Woolwich was in 1760. This must be set down as one of the exceptions which prove the rule.

FIG. 50.—AT WOOLWICH.

"To Lieut. Thomas Sanders, late of the Royal

Regiment of Artillery, who died March

1760, aged 60 (?) years."

There is a more recent case in which the same idea is pourtrayed in somewhat different fashion on a headstone in the obsolete graveyard of St. Oswald, near the Barracks at York. It is dedicated to John Kay, a private in the Royal Scots Greys, who died July 9, 1833, aged 34 years.

But, on the whole, it may be accepted as an axiom that originality has shunned the town churchyards, and the absence of curious varieties of the gravestone among the well-sown acres of Bunhill Fields and such-like places of the period at which they were by comparison so abundant in less considered localities admits of a simple explanation.

In the eighteenth century town and country were much more divided than they are now. London and the rural districts were not on their present level. Taste in art and in the ordinary affairs of life was being cultivated in town; it was not even encouraged in the country. Education and refinement were not thought to be desirable accomplishments in a rustic population, but dwellers in cities had been for generations improving their manners, and thus it was that no such provincial vulgarity as a decorated tombstone could be tolerated in the choice metropolis.

The clergy were always the masters in such matters, and their influence is seen in many places, even in the villages, in keeping the churchyard free from ridicule; but, broadly speaking, there is no doubt that the rectors and vicars in London and other large cities began quite a hundred years earlier than those of the villages that control and supervision over the carving and inscriptions on the tombstone which is now the almost universal rule. It was unquestionably the adoption of this practice by the country parson, late in the eighteenth century or early in the nineteenth century, that put an end in rural places to the "period" of illustrated epitaphs which had long gone out of fashion, or, more likely, had never come into being, among the busier hives of humanity.

A rare variety of the cloud-and-angel series, which are so frequent, is seen in Longfield Churchyard on the Maidstone Road. Trumpets of the speaking or musical order are frequently introduced to typify the summons to resurrection, but here we have the listener pourtrayed by the introduction of an ear-trumpet.

FIG. 51.—AT LONGFIELD.

"To Mary Davidge, died 1772, aged 69 years."

Allegorical gravestones of recent date, that is of the time which we call the present day, are very seldom seen, and such as there are do not come within the scope of this work. There is one in West Wickham Churchyard devoted to a chorister, and sculptured with a representation of the church organ-pipes. Memorials to deceased Freemasons are perhaps the most frequent of late carvings, as in the sketch from Lydd in the Romney Marsh district.

FIG. 52.—AT LYDD.

"To John Finn, died June 9th, 1813, aged 30 years."

Occasionally, too, some plain device appears on even a modern headstone, such as the following, which is one of the few I have from the London area. The graves of the same half-century may be searched without finding many carvings more ambitious than this.

FIG. 53.—AT ST. JAMES'S, BERMONDSEY.

"To Charles Thomas Henry Evans, died 1849."

Churchyards beside the Upper Thames are nearly all prolific in old gravestones, the riparian settlements having been well populated during the favourable period. This is especially the case at Richmond and Twickenham, but of the great number of eighteenth-century stones in both churchyards there are few very remarkable. Richmond has a rare specimen of the full-relief skull. The death's head has on either side of it the head of an angel in half-relief. The stone is a double one, and I have never met its fellow.

FIG. 54.—AT RICHMOND.

"To Annie Smedley (?), died 1711, aged

90 years."

As companions to this I present a pair of dwarf stones with full-relief heads of seraphs and cherubs—an agreeable change—from the same county.

FIG. 55.—AT RIPLEY.

"To Sarah wife of Henry Bower, died 1741.

To Henry Bower, died March 23rd, 1758."

The Rector of the parish passed as I was sketching these interesting objects, and was surprised to find that he had anything so unusual in his churchyard.