C O N T E X T 1 0 5 : J U LY 2 0 0 8 19 Left:The Grade II* Church of St James, South Stoke, Bath, with monuments and headstones dating from the 17th century in relatively good condition. (Photo: Jonathan Taylor) Right: Monuments at ArnosVale Cemetery, Bristol, are currently being restored with the help of a £4.8 million HLF grant. (Photo: Jonathan Taylor) church’s responsibilities through Diocesan Advisory Committee and faculty control will be all the greater. Re-making monuments has been standard practice. In Brislington churchyard, Bristol, there is a chest tomb to Thomas Newman, who died in 1542 aged 153. Or did he? The monument is inscribed ‘This stone was new faced in the year 1771, to perpetuate the great age of the deceased’. Both date of and age at death seem highly implausible. The point is that churchwardens involved themselves in perpetuating memory. The form for so doing was secondary to the message. In Hampstead churchyard is the twicerenewed chest tomb to the renowned watch-maker and perfecter of longitude, Thomas Harrison, who died in 1776. Not only does this work as a monument, instructing us about his life and achievement, but it has now acquired a patina of its own and is a pleasing example of a 1934 neo-Georgian monument. Sometimes it is worth striking back at oblivion and questioning our assumptions about conserve-asfound. The obelisk in Finchley churchyard to Major Cartwright (1740–1824), ‘the father of reform’, leader of late Georgian radicalism and one of the heroes of EP Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class, is now at risk. Its portrait is a palsied mess. This is not the patina of age but the onslaught of dissolution. When memories are worth perpetuating it can be worth returning to the original means of doing so, and returning the memorial to a fit state, capable of imparting messages to posterity. Rory Young’s work in Painswick churchyard, and the recently restored Townsend tomb in St Giles Churchyard, Oxford, prove that there is a place for carefully executed renewal. The technology of chest tomb construction is fairly elementary, and it would be good to demystify their conservation through guidance. David Odgers is currently completing English Heritage’s guidance on monument repair, to be launched this autumn. As a subject, churchyards remain curiously underresearched, given their ubiquity, antiquity and interest.7 Considering their potential for community involvement, from weeding squads to local history recording projects, this is all the more surprising. American studies are way in advance of our own and Scottish researches are livelier than English ones. It is hard to beat a good skull and cross-bones. Skeletons are even better. The variety, inventiveness and eloquence of many 18th century headstones is arresting, and the later Georgian shift from moralising symbolism to more decorative modes is often a cause for regret. It is getting harder and harder for us to appreciate the range and development of symbolism, as reliefs get fainter and fainter. In the churchyard of St Mary’s, Broadwater,Worthing,West Sussex there is the headstone of Elizabeth Penfold, who died in 1793.The original is virtually illegible, but inside the church is a drawing showing the sounding of the last trump, with both churchyard and harbour giving up their dead. Where else in the historic environment is lettering found in such abundance? Dates and epitaphs humanise the memorials and inscribe emotions, relationships, facts and hopes on to inanimate stone. Epitaphs can be off-the-peg or heart-rending articulations of grief.When inscriptions of particular note are no longer legible, sensitive re-cutting may be appropriate. The recent restoration of the tomb of leading abolitionist Granville Sharp (died 1813) in Fulham churchyard led to the request to re-cut the epitaph. Conservation anxieties soon emerged. We need to take stock of what matters most: the message, the medium or the patina of age. Sometimes we have to bring the dead back to life, and remind the present of the relevance of history. Roger Bowdler is a team leader in the heritage protection department at English Heritage. [email protected] References 1 Penguin, ed (1959), 63 2 Penguin, ed (1971), 157 3 Harriet Fraser’s Memorials by Artists, established in 1988, occupies a key position at the head of this revival. 4 Illustration in the Georgian Group Journal (1993), 92 5 House of Commons, 6 May 2008, available via John Mann MP’s website 6 See Martin Palmer’s article on ‘The Living Churchyard’, published in The Conservation and Repair of Ecclesiastical Buildings (1999), available on the buildingconservation. com website. 7 Frederick Burgess’ English Churchyard Memorials (Lutterworth, 1963) is the best introduction. Hilary Lees’ eponymous book (2000) is the most recent, and the most accessible. Harold Mytum’s Recording and Analysing Graveyards (Council for British Archaeology, 1999) is strong on analysis. Sarah Tarlow’s Bereavement and Commemoration: an archaeology of mortality (1999) is humane and incisive.
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