Cemetery musings



Personal and family names
define who we are

© Godric Godricson



Humanity has always been focused on “culture”. Whatever human traits we try to discuss,  we are drawn to describing others in terms borrowed from discussions about  culture. Whether or not we are talking about food, a dress code or music we are often talking about culture. For example, Scottish people are still rich in culture and the people of Wales are rapidly re-finding their own culture and traits as they rapidly move towards independence but is culture the only thing that defines both the quick and the dead?



Some monuments defend
our identity

© Godric Godricson



Well, no, actually culture is only one way that we define ourselves and the people around us. Culture may define who we are as we give ourselves labels that both include and exclude. We may be British and Scottish or British and from Norfolk but those are ‘big’ labels and they contain many people who will also be covered by the label. Instead, as well as being part of a generalised and sometimes vague culture,  we are also very much individuals who are rich in personality and life experience. Each of us have personal and family names that play a large part in our individual creation of identity.

Our first name and family name largely define who we are in a very real way and they are an antidote to the way that an overlay of 'culture' subsumes us into larger groups. The ‘Mc’s and Mac’s’ of Scotland may be part of a naming system prevelent in Scottish culture but  such 'tags' are also held by people who are real individuals. So, as well as being defined by cultural overlays we are also defined by our personal and family name.



Joshua Burroughs
d 1908
bur : Great Cressingham

© Godric Godricson



It is a real pity that when we die, we often loose a well seasoned and peculiar individuality. Instead of being Sam or Mike we become “the departed” or “the dead” and we cease to be an individual as we join the realms of yet another amorphous group. Perhaps there is a culture of the dead as well as there being a “sociology of the dead”? We love the people that we lower into the grave but then we have a tendency to inevitably forget them with the passing of time. More so, we allow Church Authorities to forget the dead and we even allow Authorities to rip away their monuments from them with the passing of time. As the years go, fewer and fewer people remember the dead and the space is re-used without protest. The special identity that we had as an individual has gone as the grass grows and we are clothed, instead, by anonymity.

The goal for the graveyard rabbit is to preserve the names of the dead by recording not only the monuments but also by preserving a uniqueness found in the cemetery. The dead may have their unique rights and we must help them exercise those rights. Whilst sandstone monuments dissolve over time with a subsequent diminution of identity the nature of the cemetery itself must remain in its fully recorded glory.

Great Cressingham - Saint Michael



Flintwork on the porch

© Godric Godricson



The Cemetery at Saint Michael's, Great Cressingham, is a little sad in nature and the brief trial video at the bottom of this posting (taken in August 2011) captures something of that forlorn appearance. The cemetery is walled on 2 sides with monuments propped along the walls. The enclosing wall cuts the cemetery and the Church off from the majority of the sparsely populated community which serves as a commuter village for Norfolk. The cemetery has  poor and largely uncut grass and this weak growth gives the impression of neglect and a lack of attention to detail. Whatever the reality of the actual groundsmanship undertaken at Great Cressingham, the casual visitor is left with the perception of a parish that doesn't really care about how it looks and has no respect for either the quick or the dead. The interior of the Church is covered by a magnificent website which I encourage you to look at although after reading the piece one can understand how the cemetery itself is somewhat neglected.



A frequent message

© Godric Godricson



There are no large monuments in the cemetery and the monuments that do exist are often late Victorian and early 20th Century with little artistic merit although they do speak about the  faith of the departed and especially of the family left behind. The large and hilly cemetery is still used and the cemetery is a place where we witness a unity across many generations and across almost endless years. This is a place where the people of Great Cressingham all go, in good time,  and are laid to rest in a place hallowed by use and tradition. However, we can only speculate as to how the place would look more attractive with a little care and attention from the parish and/or the Episcopalian Authorities.

The village of Great Cressingham has, like a lot of villages, forgotten about the departed and the Anglican Authorities have allowed such neglect to happen.

North Pickenham - Saint Andrew



"Entrance to the vault"

© Godric Godricson

 The parish Church is a rather sad looking exterior. The predictable result of Victorian re-modelling. There is an enigmatic stone cut sign on the north side which reads “Entrance to the vault” and one can only imagine what is in the vault. I imagine this is the ossuary from the ancient building at North Pickenham.

The recent works in the Church meant that the floor was partially dug up and this lead to the grisly sight of small pieces of bone being deposited on the wall as men wheelbarrowed spoil to a skip outside. 800 years or so of intramural inhumation (burials in Churches) means that there is probably a large amount of disarticulated bone in the building either under the floor  or in the backfill of various works.



The "garden shed" at Saint Andrew

© Godric Godricson

 Outside, the cemetery is rather dire although still in use with burials taking place. The monuments are not special and speak of a sort of ‘normal’ experience whereby people are born, they live and they die. Largely without memorials, the people of North Pickenham are laid to rest regularly and without fuss. When the sandstone memorials break they are placed around the wall although there is none of the mass cemetery clearances seen in other parishes.




Coffin shaped monument
covered in grass clippings

© Godric Godricson



Litcham - All Saints



Litcham - All Saints

© Godric Godricson



Some time ago I came across the parish of All Saints in Litcham on a drive around the County of Norfolk. The village is pretty but in many ways it is unremarkable and no more or less than many other Norfolk towns and villages. However, the parish Church has wonderful brick lined graves  that represent many similar tombs around East Anglia. The graveyard is clearly of great antiquity and a dedication of the Church  to “All Saints” means that the Church is ancient. The photograph is interesting because we find two brick lined graves that are in effect giving way and succumbing to the effects of antiquity, poor workmanship and the probable effects of soil that is too soft for such structures against the base of a Church wall.

The inhabitants of the graves are less important than the narrative of their position . We have two brick lined  tombs capped by a rough ledger stone and separated by a sandstone stele of 1822.  The three hang together in a drunken fashion and are emblematic of the strange companions found in cemeteries.

The occupants of the brick tombs are clearly a ‘cut above the rest’ when it comes to burials. They are separated from the cold soil in their wait for immortality by the thickness of the brick lining and their wooden coffins. Although they were not able to afford a better quality ledger stone. In this example, we have a fairly rough sandstone ledger rather than a finer polished stone of “Tournai marble” from Belgium. Such marble is found in East Anglia and when seen in ‘intramural inhumation’ is a sign of wealth and privilege. Often with wonderful Momenti Mori the high polish of this black stone gives an elegance to the burial.  Momenti Mori are seen around the world and  we see that they stand as a warning and as an example that we should take from history.

The tombs in the cemetery at Litcham are elegant in their simplicity and speak  of people in the village who had some resources, even if they didn’t have as much as those who could afford to be buried inside. The tombs are  beginning the long descent into dereliction and decay and one wonders how long this burial will survive as the voids underneath may begin to undermine the structure of the Church itself.



Momenti Mori Necton Parish Church

© Godric Godricson



A link to a story about the searce for a brick lined family grave in Cambridge see this link

North Walsham - The quick and the dead



House and shop
encroach on the
cemetery

© Godric Godricson



There is something very urban in nature about the ways in which cemeteries (set aside for the dead) are  paradoxically sometimes close to the places where we live and shop. Europe has many experiences of  spaces originally occupied by the dead becoming colonised  and encroached upon by the living. This juxtapositioning is nothing new and we can see examples throughout the ages and across the continent.

The most apparent problem for cemeteries is the way they are ‘nibbled away’ by growing populations and the development of towns. Cemeteries are sometimes reduced in size by road widening, the development of railways and by the re-modelling of Church buildings themselves. Cemeteries are always seen as being a resting place for eternity although the idea of eternity changes all the time.



The living move into the cemetery

© Godric Godricson



So, how do we find the places where the living now encroach on the dead? Well, there is archive based research and the well designed archives in Norwich have a splendid collection of papers relating to the parish Churches in the County. It is possible to trace the changing shape of cemeteries whereby parish cemeteries have grown by the acquisition of new land. This growth of cemeteries happens most often in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries. The story of cemetery growth in London is expanded on and developed in an excellent web site on cemeteries and the experience of London  In this site we can see an exploration of the urban experience in which the living encroach on the dead. The article relating to St. Martin’s le Grand and the finding of ‘lost tombs’ is a metaphor for the experience of town dwellers and their relationship with the dead and cemeteries. This site goes on to describe the growth and expansion of the living……..

“Three years later, the cemetery was consecrated by Beilby Porteous, the Bishop of London. But its life was not a peaceful one: someone always had their eyes on this desirable bit of land. In 1817, permission was granted to build almshouses on an unused part of the ground: these survive to this day. In 1854, further permission was granted for development on the site, including demolition of the existing buildings.”

St. Martin’s Gardens

Posted on July 25, 2011

Clearly, urban communities have always ebbed and flowed in size and design and although London as a capital city is not typical;  it is an excellent example of the means by which cemeteries have developed. London is an example of how cemeteries change their shape and change their function within the town. Equally, it is clear from London’s experience that cemeteries may also disappear from the landscape of the town and be covered up by later development.

Whilst the experience of London gives a clear example of how cemeteries are eclipsed by later urban development we can also see how smaller towns also have a similar experience and response to change and development.



The living ignore the dead

© Godric Godricson



Even Saint Nicholas Church  which sits at the heart of the original Saxon town of North Walsham has an experience of change. From an early date,  houses and shops moved onto the original cemetery site and took up residence. The town hemmed the Church into its current space and then proved to be a greedy neighbour. Doors opened to the rear of properties onto the cemetery and the living used the consecrated space. Pathways were cut across the cemetery as one side of the town connected itself with the other. Eventually, the headstones themselves were destroyed or removed and cleared away by the ever eager Anglican Authorities who are always  ready to turn their cemetery into an 'easy-care' parkland. The Authorities have been so ruthless that this urban park is totally clear of memorials on one side of the building and on the other side the memorials are neatly laid out and used as regimented boundary markers.  The memorials are separated from the original burial and any meaningful narrative is destroyed.



The shops in the small town have taken over from small houses and the properties, often one room wide,  creep into the Church yard presumably with the permission of the Authorities in the 17^th Century and before that. The former Authorities connived at this ‘encroachment’ and witnessed the confrontation of the living and the dead.

Young couples recline on the roughly cut grass on hot sunny days in the shadow of the ruined tower as if they were in a Victorian municipal park and yet under their feet are a thousand years of burials. The cemetery forms little more than an urban open space. The development of a soulless concrete shopping precinct to one side of the cemetery only makes the situation worse as the concrete and steel of the new development hems the cemetery into its place without sympathetically reflecting the original purpose of the site or referencing the departed that lay in repose so close by.



Up to the kitchen wall

© Godric Godricson



The experience of North Walsham is not unique and has many of the dynamics seen in other urban cemeteries. There is probably folly, greed and desperation forming  human decision making relating to the cemetery and it has to be acknowledged that contemporary Church Authorities do at least ensure that the Church is open during the day and that the Church is open to receive visitors.

In North Walsham,  we can see the living and dead sharing an intimate geographical place. Even if the departed are forgotten as individuals and ancestors; they cannot be ignored completely  as they cling onto their place within the town environment and their own limited share in immortality.