In Search of Gravestones Old and CuriousVincent, W. T. (William Thomas)
History
In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious
Vincent, W. T. (William Thomas)
Sepulchral monuments
No. 3, in which part of the inscription "Here lyeth" intrudes into the
arch belonging by right to the illustration, is equally primitive and
artless. The eyebrows, cheeks--in fact all the features--are evidently
unassisted studies from the living, not the dead, frontispiece of
humanity; but what are the serifs, or projections, on either side?
Wondrous as it is, there can be only one answer. They must be meant
for _ears_! This curious effigy commemorates Mary, wife of William
Greenhill, who died in 1717, aged 47 years.
No. 4 is one of the rude efforts to imitate the skull and crossbones
of which we find many examples. It is dedicated to one Grinhill
(probably a kinsman of the Greenhills aforesaid), who died in 1720,
aged 56 years.
Most strange of all is No. 5, in which the mason leaps to the real
from the emblematic, and gives us something which is evidently meant
for a portrait of the departed. The stone records that Mary, wife of
Thomas Jackson, died in 1730, aged 43 years. It is one of the double
tombstones frequently met with in Kent and some other counties.
The second half, which is headed by a picture of two united hearts,
records that the widower Thomas Jackson followed his spouse in 1748,
aged 55 years.
Upon a stone adjacent, to Mary London, who died in 1731, there has
been another portrait of a lady with braided hair, but time has almost
obliterated it. I mention the circumstance to shew that this
special department of obituary masonry, as all others, was prone
to imitations. I may also remark that intelligent inhabitants and
constant frequenters of these two churchyards have informed me that in
all the hundreds of times of passing these stones they never observed
any of their peculiarities. It ought, however, to be said that these
primitive carvings or scratchings are not often conspicuous, and
generally require some seeking. They are always on a small scale of
drawing, in nearly every instance within the diminished curve of
the most antiquated form of headstone (such as is shewn in the
Frontispiece), and as a rule they are overgrown with lichen, which
has to be rubbed off before the lines are visible. It may safely be
averred, on the other hand, that the majority of the old stones
when found of this shape contain or have contained these remarkable
figures, and in some places, particularly in Kent, they literally
swarm. There is a numerous assortment of them at Meopham, a once
remote hamlet, now a station on the London, Chatham, and Dover
Railway. I have copied only one--an early attempt apparently to
produce a cherub resting with outstretched wings upon a cloud, but
there are a good many of the same order to keep it in countenance.
FIG. 18.--AT MEOPHAM.
"To Sarah Edmeades, died 1728, aged 35 years."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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