In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious

by W. T. Vincent

to be 1751.

The overturned sheaf presumably refers metaphorically to the fate of the farmer whom the stone was set up to commemorate. The old-fashioned plough is cut only in single profile, but is not an ineffective emblem. I imagine that the ribbon above the plough bore at one time some inscribed words which time has obliterated.

The design invented by the sculptor at Sutton at Hone, near Dartford, is less original and also less striking.

FIG. 59.—AT SUTTON AT HONE.

"To Richard Northfield, died Oct. 19, 1767,

aged 71 years."

In the case of John Bone, bricklayer, of Bromley, Kent, it would probably be wrong to associate with his calling the tools engraved on his headstone. They were probably meant with the rest of the picture to represent the emblems of mortality.