CHURCHYARD BURIALS

Many family historians gain significant information about their ancestral families by researching the actual graveyard as well as the graves. There are many different documents and sources which can reveal much about their history. This in turn helps us even more when trying to locate our ancestors. 

All churchyard closures were subject to a formal notice in the London Gazette, but in some cases burials continued in closed churchyards after such notice. It is particularly important to follow-through on such notices relating to urban churchyards. The increase in the number of cemeteries replacing churchyards reflected the unsanitary conditions. Many graveyards were so overcrowded that there was a huge public desire for alternative burial grounds. Few very early monuments survive with medieval tombs and seventeenth-century headstones being a rarity. However, from the mid-Georgian period, churchyard monuments gained popularity.

The answer to that question is...quite simply because they provide a wealth of information about communities and the people within them, their customs and tastes.

In 752AD consent was obtained for burials to be made around the church. The origin of the phrase God’s acre was the enclosure of a rectangular piece of land of one acre. Early burials would norfmally have taken place south of the Church. In due course, once these spaces were used and full up, alternative land space to the north of the church was used.

In the medieval era it was usual for shrouds as opposed to coffins to be used to bury the dead. Parishes also used their communal coffin which could be wheeled to the graveside; in addition, graves would often be marked by wooden crosses until after the Reformation when stone markers became commonplace. Most graves were oriented west to east with the gravestones made from locally quarried materials. Any inscription on the gravestone usually eulogised the good deeds of the deceased.

Many churchyards contain a building which, in the era of the resurrection men, was used as watchman’s shelters; more recently they were used as a store for gravediggers' tools.

Most headstones and other memorials exist from the seventeenth century because ground would often be reused for further burials and only some families could afford any memorials. In many churchyards it is obvious that the level of the ground has risen substantially over the centuries presumably because of the number of reburials in the graves requiring more ground to be earthed up.

Development of ground used for schemes such as road-widening or even building development often meant the loss of part of the churchyard; this meant the removal of graves and headstones. In some cases the remains were exhumed and reburied elsewhere with the gravestones also transferred. Evidence exists that gravestones have been removed to help with graveyard maintenance and it is not unusual to see headstones lined against boundary walls, stacked around tree trunks or used as flags to for paving often with the inscriptions downward facing.

Today village churchyards often bear no resemblance to the churchyards of the previous centuries where fairs or pageants were held alongside village games and gambling. In some areas the churchyard was used to brew and consume beer. The church ale was sold to offset church fabric repair and maintenance.

In most churchyards the area to the north side of the church was usually unconsecrated ground and was used solely for the burial of children who had not been baptised, nonconformist dissenters and those who committed suicide.

The entrance to many churchyards was through a lych gate. Lych was an old English word for corpse.  Many original lych gates have been replaced with more modern structures but they retain the same significance and meaning.  As part of a funeral, the body would have been carried as far as the lych gate where the cortege would wait for the clergy - it was unacceptable to enter the churchyard unless led by the officiating minister. The officiating minister would be accompanied by the sexton with the parish bier on which the body was placed to be wheeled into the church for the funeral service. Following the church service, the body was then wheeled to the grave for the committal part of the service.

Yew trees are symbols of everlasting life and so are also often associated with virtually every churchyard.  Because yew leaves are poisonous, their planting was an effective deterrent to stray and destructive livestock. In medieval times the trees also provided a supply of wood for making bows and arrows.  There is also evidence that Edward I ordered their planting to protect the fabric of the church building from the weather and gave some protection to the gravestones, ensuring they remained legible.