16 C O N T E X T 1 0 5 : J U LY 2 0 0 8 Roger Bowdler God’s Acre or forlorn boneyard? Fact and symbolism, formal beauty and intensity of emotion: what else comes as close in the historic environment in terms of range and meaning as a churchyard? I know that the proper thing to do, when you get to a village or town, is to rush off to the churchyard, and enjoy the graves; but it is a recreation that I always deny myself. Jerome K Jerome,Three Men in a Boat (1889)1 Churchyards are one of Britain’s great contributions to world civilization. Naturally, therefore, we take them for granted. In our dash for the Norman font, or the Clayton and Bell glass, or even for divine worship, we ignore the maudlin stones outside and resign ourselves to their gradual dissolution. Someone else will look after them. Anyway, it’s all about rotting, isn’t it? Graveyards are extraordinary repositories of precisely dated objects which connect us with past lives, past – and present – faiths, and combine architecture, masonry, carving, elegiac wording and genealogical information. Fact and symbolism, formal beauty and intensity of emotion: what else comes close in the historic environment in terms of range and meaning? It is this togetherness that endows the churchyard with so much of its allure. On the clearance front, things have looked up considerably since the 1960s, when the lawnmower was king, and the lawn cemetery a beau idéal of how modern burial might be. St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, and St Wendreda’s, March, Cambridgeshire, stand for hundreds of other fine churches which have endured a cull of stones, the survivors placed in sterile ranks around the edges. Goethe’s Elective Affinities (1809) included an account of a churchyard landscaping, with all the stones and mounds cleared to create a lawn of universal relevance and utility. ‘It is not the stone itself which draws us to the spot, but that which is preserved beneath it,’ lamented the objectors, but it is the stones which make the connections possible.2 The barren sward is impoverished by the loss of connection between above-ground and below-ground realms, and the urge to clear still needs resisting. The historic environment should be a source of cheer and solace. The quantities of older memorials remind us that all must turn to dust, while the emotions we find in both symbol and epitaph show that thousands have gone before us.We are just the current generation in an onward flow of feeling, hurting humanity. Some churchyards include finely executed modern memorials which demonstrate that the revival in bespoke monuments continues apace.3 The act of remembering and honouring is making a come-back: the past inspires the present, and the responses of lost generations inspire our own encounters with death and loss. Earlier generations were every bit as aware as we are of the ageing effects of external sculpture. In the later 1760s, Lord Mayor of London Sir Thomas Fludyer’s SimonVerity’s headstone to Sir John Betjeman (died 1984), St Enodoc’s church, Trebetherick, Cornwall. It represents the modern revival in headstones at its most joyous. Robert Chambers’ tomb of Sir Thomas Fludyer (died 1767), St Margaret, Lee, London Borough of Lewisham. A winter canopy once kept this sarcophagus from harm.
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