Free Gravestones, Tombs & Memorials by Trevor Yorke Page A

and stone chambers erected from the Neolithic Age up to as late as the Early Saxon period to house either a corpse or cremated remains. Archaeologists regularly uncover cemeteries which can date from the second half of the Bronze Age through the Roman period (where they were usually sited outside of town boundaries) and into the Dark Ages. One key feature they look for to help date the graves is their alignment – where they are laid out in no set direction it implies a pagan burial but where they are on a roughly east-west axis the deceased was probably a Christian. This can usually be tied in with when the Saxons in a region were converted by missionaries – the armies of Celtic priests and monks invading from the north and those of the Roman Church from the south during the late 6th and 7th centuries.
    Christian burials
    Christians are buried with the head at the west end of the grave facing up and the feet at the east end. It is generally said that this is so the dead will awake at the Second Coming of Christ and be able to face in the direction from which He will arrive. However, the practice of burial so the deceased can look at the rising sun predates Christianity and it is more likely to be a hangover from older religious beliefs. The bodies of most people through the Middle Ages, and the poor up until the 19th century, would have been interred in a shroud, tied above the head and feet; only the better off would usually have a coffin.

    FIG 1.2: RUDSTON, YORKS: The success of Christianity partly lay in the way the early Church adopted old pagan beliefs rather than destroying them. Many churchyards were established around existing religious sites, and some today retain a distinctive round or irregular plan which implies they were pre-Christian. Others contain ancient features like round barrows or standing stones, none more notable than this huge monolith at Rudston. Pagan symbols like this may have simply had a cross cut into them to drive out old spirits.
    Although these missionaries founded churches in the newly-converted regions, very few buildings were erected, with most priests travelling out from a Minster to a designated site probably consecrated by a wooden and, later, a stone cross. The first specific mention of a churchyard is in the mid 8th century although it is likely that burials were already taking place at these revered sites, some perhaps attracted by the interment of a notable missionary or priest. By the 10th century the specific area of ‘God’s Acre’ was being marked out by small wooden crosses in the corners. With parish churches often being founded after this period it is likely that many churchyards pre-date the building upon which they appear to centre.

    FIG 1.3: Hogsback grave markers were of Norse inspiration and can still be found in churchyards in the North as in this example from Penrith, Cumbria. Although named after their curving form they are actually meant to represent a house with the scale-shaped tiles still visible on the upper half.
    Most graves throughout the Middle Ages probably had no permanent markers although temporary wooden crosses may have been inserted. The clergy and nobles were more likely to have a stone memorial: a grave slab with a cross incised down its tapering length or a short stone with a disc-shaped head, which are two types that can still be found today. Burial inside for anyone but the clergy was frowned upon by the early Church and it was only from the late 13th century that it became common for the local nobility to be interred there. Their memorials usually took the form of an altar tomb, a raised chest decorated with tracery or coats of arms on later types, and an effigy of the deceased lying along the top. They would either be positioned in the chancel (the nearer to the altar the better), or in a chantry chapel, created from part of an aisle or a separate building in which mass was said for its wealthy founder. Other rich