VIII. LYCHGATES
LYCHGATES are so named from the old Anglo-Saxon word lich, or German leiche, meaning corpse, because they stood at the entrance of the churchyard, where the bearers of the dead might deposit their burden, and rest awhile before passing through, and into the church for the solemn funeral rites. Some lychgates are actually provided with a long flat slab for this very purpose, as is the case, for instance, at Ashprington and Atherington, both in Devonshire, and at Chiddingfold, Surrey (Fig. [227]). Usually also they are fitted with benches.
The rubric of the Prayer Book of 1549 directed that the officiating minister at funerals should go to meet the corpse at the "church style," i.e., lychgate; and again, according to the Prayer Book now in use (of the year 1662), the clergyman and the clerks meeting the corpse "at the entrance of the churchyard" (i.e., at the lychgate, wherever one exists), there begin the burial service, and thence precede the body into the church.
In some places, as at Heston and Hayes, in Middlesex, and at Chalfont St Giles, the entrance gates form turnstiles, being fixed to a central post, which revolves on a pivot.
There is hardly scope for any very great variety of types in lychgates, but they may be classified generally under certain main groups, viz., first, the porch-shape, in which the roof-ridge has the same axis as the passage way; secondly, the shed-like form, in which the roof-ridge runs transversely to the axial line of the passage way; thirdly, a rare variety, embodying both the previous features, and such that is exemplified by the charming lychgate at Clun, Shropshire (Fig. [235]), where two roof-ridges cross one another at right angles; or at Berrynarbor, Devonshire, where the lychgate is on the plan of a cross; and, lastly, lychgates formed by the combination of the requisite passage way with a church house or other building. To this class belongs the entrance to the churchyard at Penshurst, Kent, an example well known and admired for its picturesqueness. Other instances are those of Hartfield in Sussex (Fig. [201]), Long Compton in Warwickshire, Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire (Fig. [204]), and Bray in Berkshire (Figs. [202], [203]). The last-named specimen is of exceptional interest, not only because it contains an ancient chapel, but also because it bears, on one of the uprights of the entrance, the date of its construction, 1448, a most unusual circumstance. The penthouse gallery, shown on the left of the photograph, is a modern addition. It will also be noticed, on comparison of the two illustrations, that the west window of the old chapel-chamber has, since 1879, been robbed of some of its mullions, and now consists of three lights only.
Two Welsh examples of lychgates, with a room built over each, are enumerated by the Rev. Elias Owen, in 1886, viz., Derwen, Denbighshire, where the upper storey is utilised for parochial purposes, and Whitford, Flintshire, where it served as a schoolroom. Latterly, "when the school increased in numbers, the lychgate was blocked up and formed into a class-room" in addition to the upper part. The same writer remarks that a fully equipped lychgate includes seats, a lychcross and a lychstone. As a rule, both lychcrosses and lychstones "have disappeared ... but underneath the roof of Caerwys (Flintshire) lychgate are still to be seen the beam and socket, where once stood the wooden lychcross, and on the ground are traceable the foundation stones of the two lychseats, and of the lychstone in the centre of the porch. This rest for the coffin was a low wall" of about a coffin's length. Some of the distinctive features of lychgates were destroyed in the eighteenth century. Thus "the beam that stretched from wall to wall," and had a wooden cross inserted into it, "has, in nearly every instance, been sawn away." The above-named example at Caerwys, however, according to the Inventory of the Royal Commission, still survives. The place was visited in July 1910, and the report runs: "Within the covered lychgate is a pre-Reformation oak frame, the two uprights supporting a beam in which a cross was fixed," the ancient custom having been to set down corpses on their way to burial upon the lychstone immediately beneath this cross.
The distribution of lychgates in various districts is most unequal. Thus nearly every one of the twenty-four churches of the Deanery of Woodleigh, Devonshire, is said to possess a lychgate. An instance, which may safely be pronounced unique, is that of Troutbeck, Westmorland, where there are, or were, no less than three stone lychgates to one and the same churchyard.
200. HAYES, MIDDLESEX