As curiously illustrating local specialities, one of my parishioners has told me that when travelling some few years ago in Cornwall, where granite and other hard rocks prevail, but no gravel or flints, he asked one of the residents whom he met, if she knew of flint stones, to which she replied, “Oh! yes, I know flints, I have seen one in the Museum at Torquay.” I much fear that not even one flint is to be seen in our grand Museum on the Castle Hill!
Whilst on the subject of myself (the Tower), I may mention the Clock, which has so long existed on my eastern face, and which, judging from the constant reference made to it by the passing throngs, is an undoubted public boon. To the parish it is a source of some expense.
This Clock was restored and re-coloured at the general restoration of the Church in 1865–6, when the figure of Old Time, holding a scythe in his hand (as many of us will remember), was removed. The Clock face and Clock hands do not look to the passer-by to be very large; but I find, on measurement, that the diameter of the Clock face is 10 ft., that the Roman letter numbers on it measure 1½ ft., that the length of the large hand is 6 ft. 5½ in., with a weight of 21 lbs., and that of the small hand 3 ft. 4 in., with a weight of 8 lbs. My Clock has belonging to it a special Clock Bell.
Then, as to my contents. As this is an Autobiography, and as all Autobiographers are necessarily egotistical, you must allow me to dwell a few minutes more upon my personal specialities. And first, as to my Peal of Bells, eight in number, which are naturally of great interest to myself, and which hold a high place among the various peals of Norwich. These, according to the high authority of the late Mr. L’Estrange, were placed in me between the years 1593, or earlier, and 1738, and they were renovated and restored in 1870, at the expense of Messrs. Browne, Bridgman, and Firth, parishioners of St. Giles. (One of these bells is what is called a Gabriel Bell—the “Angel Gabriel brought the good tidings to the Virgin Mary.”) And think for a moment what phases of life these bells have taken part in during all these hundreds of years. I find that since 1538, when our parish registers begin, some 2,524 entries of marriage have been made in them. And it is reasonable to suppose that at a fair proportion of these, especially in earlier times, my bells have rung out their merry chimes, and in their special language have wished all joy and happiness to the newly wedded pairs. You remember how Byron speaks of this: “And all went merry as a marriage bell.”
On the other hand, during the same period, or, rather, up to 1856, when interments in the Churchyard ceased by Act of Parliament, i.e. in 318 years, nearly ten thousand (9,770, as roughly counted) entries of burials here are made in the parish register books. And it is almost certain that one of my bells has announced first the fact of the death, and then that of the mournful ceremony of interment, in each of these cases. Just think, as I do, of all these ten thousand dead lying at my foot, waiting, as Baring Gould has so beautifully said, for the “Resurrection morning,” when “soul and body meet again.” Such an accumulation of mortal remains in so limited a space may well arouse much and solemn reflection. How well a Suffolk poet reverently describes such a disused graveyard as mine now is, where he says:—
“The gathered ashes of long centuries rest;
A few white tombstones and a few dim-gray,
Mark names that have not yet quite passed away.”
Nor can I fail to quote to you Gray’s beautiful words, so applicable to such a disused churchyard:—
“Hark! how the sacred calm, that breathes around,
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease,
In still small accents whispering from the ground,
A grateful earnest of eternal peace.”
The graveyard of St. Giles, which lies beneath and around me, is, as I have already said, no longer used for burials. It is quite full and crowded with graves and many memorial tombstones. The names upon these, as far as legible, are fully and completely given in the book which has been published by a parishioner of mine, [106] upon the “Parish of St. Giles.”
It is historically interesting to know that the burial registers, by the increased number of interments in some of the long past years, point unmistakably to the prevalence in Norwich at those times of the dread Pestilence or Plague, which is recorded as having ravaged the city from time to time. Thus, in 1603, no less than 112 persons were buried here; and in 1666, some 79—both of these “Plague years”—instead of a normal average of twenty or thirty. As you may suppose, I (the Tower) shared acutely in the distress which then reigned in the city, intensified as it was to me by the fact of three or four burials occasionally taking place here in the same day. In some other years, an increase of burials may probably have arisen from this place of mortal rest having been a favourite one, and, therefore, selected for the interment of some who had not been resident in the parish. This was certainly so in the fifty years preceding the closure of the churchyard, when fifty, sixty, or seventy were often annually interred here.