Montagu Western Plumptre - Died 24th August 1927



Buried - Kalkara, Malta [Link]


Son of  Rev. Edward Montagu Plumptre, an Anglican clergyman. Montagu was born 1903 in Limpsfield, Surrey, England.

Charles Perowne Christie. 1893-1929

Buried - Kalkara, Malta [Link]

© Godric Godricson

Charles Perowne Christie was born in Ongar, Essex 16th August 1893. Charles' father was a stockbroker agent, Charles H F Christie originating in Chigwell Charles was in the navy by the 1911 census (incorrectly registered as Charles J Christie)  as a midshipman aged 17. Charles married in 1923 and died in the Naval Hospital at Bighi in Malta [Link]. A will records that Charles left his substantial estate of over £4,000 to his wife, Caroline Stella Dyson  (Born Greenwich  27 July 1895). Caroline appears to have returned to Greenwich and appears in the electoral roles for that locality into 1939 before her own death on 16th September 1982.

I am unable to verify the information although it appears that Caroline graduated from Girton College, Cambridge University  in 1916 with a BA [Link].

For HMS Courageous [Link]

War Dead - Marquês de Nisa's men 1798

Plaque

Upper Barraka Gardens - Valetta  [Link]
© Godric Godricson

Vanishing England

Title: Vanishing England
Author: P. H. Ditchfield (1910)
Project Gutenburg

"Many of them [Churches] have been used as quarries, and only a few stones remain to mark the spot where once stood a holy house of God. Before the Reformation the land must have teemed with churches. I know not the exact number of monastic houses once existing in England. There must have been at least a thousand, and each had its church. Each parish had a church. Besides these were the cathedrals, chantry chapels, chapels attached to the mansions, castles, and manor-houses of the lords and squires, to almshouses and hospitals, pilgrim churches by the roadside, where bands of pilgrims would halt and pay their devotions ere they passed along to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury or to Our Lady at Walsingham. When chantries and guilds as well as monasteries were suppressed, their chapels were no longer used for divine service; some of the monastic churches became cathedrals or parish churches, but most of them were pillaged, desecrated, and destroyed. When pilgrimages were declared to be "fond things vainly invented," and the pilgrim bands ceased to travel along the pilgrim way, the wayside chapel fell into decay, or was turned into a barn or stable.

It is all very sad and deplorable. But the roll of abandoned shrines is not complete. At the present day many old churches are vanishing. Some have been abandoned or pulled down because they were deemed too near to the squire's house, and a new church erected at a more respectful distance. "Restoration" has doomed many to destruction. Not long ago the new scheme for supplying Liverpool with water necessitated the converting of a Welsh valley into a huge reservoir and the consequent destruction of churches and villages. A new scheme for supplying London with water has been mooted, and would entail the damming up of a river at the end of a valley and the overwhelming of several prosperous old villages and churches which have stood there for centuries. The destruction of churches in London on account of the value of their site and the migration of the population, westward and eastward, has been frequently deplored. With the exception of All Hallows, Barking; St. Andrew's Undershaft; St. Catherine Cree; St. Dunstan's, Stepney; St. Giles', Cripplegate; All Hallows, Staining; St. James's, Aldgate; St. Sepulchre's; St. Mary Woolnoth; all the old City churches were destroyed by the Great Fire, and some of the above were damaged and repaired. "Destroyed by the Great Fire, rebuilt by Wren," is the story of most of the City churches of London. To him fell the task of rebuilding the fallen edifices. Well did he accomplish his task. He had no one to guide him; no school of artists or craftsmen to help him in the detail of his buildings; no great principles of architecture to direct him. But he triumphed over all obstacles and devised a style of his own that was well suitable for the requirements of the time and climate and for the form of worship of the English National Church. And how have we treated the buildings which his genius devised for us? Eighteen of his beautiful buildings have already been destroyed, and fourteen of these since the passing of the Union of City Benefices Act in 1860 have succumbed. With the utmost difficulty vehement attacks on others have been warded off, and no one can tell how long they will remain. Here is a very sad and deplorable instance of the vanishing of English architectural treasures. While we deplore the destructive tendencies of our ancestors we have need to be ashamed of our own".

“This man lived in the tombs” Mark 5:3

Preaching a Christian message

close to the tomb

© Godric Godricson

“This man lived in the tombs” is the start of this passage in the Gospel according to Mark. This passage talks about insanity, exclusion from society and ‘madness’. Whilst I want to move away from ideas of demon possession which itself is a strange thing for contemporary Christianity to teach, I want to look at the idea of people living amongst the dead now and in the past.

It is never a point of honour to live amongst the dead and humanity tends to have various injunctions on living amongst the dead. For Mark’s Gospel, there is an affinity between madness and this living with the dead. We can always become a little allegorical about the ideas of ‘death’ means. Is Mark’s idea of death physical death or is it about waiting for new life. This isn’t the discussion I want to have. My  thought’s on this are the  ways in which the living have come into contact with the dead and share the same physical space. For Mark, the demoniac is living amongst the bones of the dead and is eating and sleeping there as a regular event. Living in the tombs is normally abhorrent to humanity and something to be avoided.



Houses and the dead compete

for space in North Walsham

© Godric Godricson

The living and the dead in Europe have come into close contact for many tears and the older towns (such as North Walsham in Norfolk) have many examples of this proximity as the population of Europe grew and the population become ever more demanding of space and as they they required burial according to tradition. Europe’s tendency to have insanitary and filthy burial traditions are seen in the research of Edwin Chadwick in the 1840’s whereby he explored and analysed the tendency to re-use the same burial  place over many generations. There was no end to the people who wished to be buried in the Church of their ancestors turning such places into an ancestral shrine. No end of people turned the aisle of Churches into a funerary park as at Saint Augustine The Less in Bristol. The rich  displayed their wealth and connections in death as in life. Death became paraded in front  of the living on a daily basis and we now have no way of understanding the effect this had on popular imagination and sensibilities. The ossuary at St Leonard’s Church in Hythe contains huge quantities of human remains and around 2000 skulls. Its likely that this wasn’t unusual in Europe although many of the remains around Britain will have been cleared away and buried in the reforms of the 19^th Century. The collection of bones is touching on the dead as part of community ancestor worship and this doesn’t seem to be part of the Gospels.



One marble slab away from the dead

© Godric Godricson

For the Priest, we may only guess at the effect of having the dead under your feet whilst you engage in an active ministry. The feet of the living standing above the bones of the rich and infamous must have an emotional effect. I understand that 21^st century feelings of appropriateness have changed from that of the 19^th century although I do sometimes reflect on how it must have felt. What effect did it have on the priest to know that the departed were just one thickness of marble away from his feet? How does this proximity affect the preaching of the Gospel and what is the effect on the congregation to know that the rich and famous are always in the sanctuary area of the Church?

The proximity of the living and the dead largely came to an end in the mid 19^th Century with the Municipal Burials Act in 1857. This ensured a more hygienic way of disposing of the dead. There was an end to new tombs in Churches and if there were still the occasional burial then the body had to be embalmed and contained in a lead coffin. Hygiene became more of an emphasis as the population became aware of disease as opposed to miasma theory and fear of emanations and exhalations. Death had become something to be separated from the living rather than to co-exist with the living. In Europe, humanity had begun to separate itself from the dead although this was probably a process that was not immediate even with legislative changes.



Thomas Matthews Died 30th April 1883
All Saints, Newton by Castle Acre
© Godric Godricson

 Whilst the living and the dead parted company some years ago in Europe, there wasn’t the same segregation in developing countries. Egypt with a history of poverty has a significant history of co-existence with the dead and the Philippines similarly has a growing community living in over crowded poverty. Whilst Europe has been allowed to part company from the dead we find the developing world being compelled to coexist in a detestable manner based on poverty and population migrations to the City. Europe and North America has turned cemeteries into parks for recreation and for cultural pursuits. 


Modern use of cemeteries around the world means that we find people living in tombs in the modern age with no sign of this disappearing.  Regrettably, humanity still lives in tombs and scrounges an existence amongst the dead.