Out and about. Looking at hidden graveyards.

Yesterday turned into a fine and sunny but very blustery day. Storm Ashley was kind to us. We walked out in the mid- to late-afternoon with blue sky and sunshine. 

On the edge of our village centre is an old church, out of use for as long as I can remember. There used to be a rather picturesque lych gate but that is long gone. 

Incidentally, I have found out that the word “lych” comes from an Old English or possibly Saxon word for “corpse”. There is a “lych bell”, a handbell, rung before a corpse at a funeral, presumably letting people know a funeral was about to take place, and a “lych way”, the path along which a corpse was carried to burial. And the screech owl is sometimes also called a “lych owl” because its piercing cry was considered a portent of death. 

In the middle ages, before mortuaries existed, the dead would be placed on a bier and taken to the lych gate until the burial could take place, maybe a day or two later. The lych gate protected the body, often just in a shroud, from the rain and there would usually be a seat for people to keep vigil and prevent bodysnatchers from making off with the body. Gruesome stuff!  

I remember reading long ago that weddings sometimes took place at the lych gate but I have not found confirmation or explanation of that. I did find out that in some parts of England, particularly parts of Yorkshire, at the end of the wedding as the bride and groom leave the church the gates are closed (or where there is an absence of gates a rope is held across) by the local children and the couple have to pay them to let them pass. However, in Cheshire and Shropshire, wedding parties would never pass through the lychgate, so as to avoid misfortune, presumably because of the connection with funerals.

Right, that’s the folklore interlude over. 

Our old village church has been boarded up for ages and rumours have long abounded about plans to convert it into something else: homes, a conference centre of some kind - who knows? At one point the boards were removed, allowing birds, small animals and, of course, rain, to get into the building. Was this a plan to accelerate its deterioration so that it could be demolished as an unsafe building? That would be a shame as it is a fine old church building. We never found out the truth of the matter.

In the last year, the windows have been boarded up again, And there has been work on a patch of land adjacent to and belonging to the church, which was up for sale by auction at one point. Stories of houses being built there have been making the rounds again but what the plans are remains a mystery. 

Anyway, because of the clearing of that patch of land, we could see a graveyard behind the church, a graveyard usually hidden from view. Or maybe we have just not noticed it in the … what? … almost 50 years we have lived in the area. Also we have long thought that another graveyard, further up the hill and more recently used, was the only one connected to that church. So we followed a path up some steps to have a look. Lots of very old gravestone slabs covered much of the area and there were a few fine family monuments, with some good old Delph family names, such as Buckley and Shaw.

We like a good graveyard, full of local history and hinting on occasion at sad stories. It’s a family thing. Even the smallest grandchildren like to take the long hike up the hill beyond the village to Heights Church, Friarmere, built in 1765 and now only very occasionally open to the public. There they like to roam around looking at the old graves. We all have our oddities.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!