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The churchyard here at
Chawleigh illustrates very precisely
one of the problems which family historians face when they look for the
graves of their ancestors.
In 1973, the Parish applied for, and obtained, a special kind of
ecclesiastical petition called a Citation for Faculty. This is the means
by which Vicars and their Parish Councils make changes to their church and its
surrounding land. The 1973 Chawleigh Citation asked for permission to
remove headstones and kerb stones from most graves, and then to level
the land in an attempt to stabilise it.
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Chawleigh Churchyard
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A few selected graves were exempted, and from the photo, the reason
for this can be seen. Repeated digging and water erosion over the centuries had caused the
central part of the graveyard to collapse and slip away, leaving only a
few places around the edges where the soil was still compacted enough to
ensure permanent burial. |
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Our churchyards here in Devon are very small - "God's
acre" was the old description. Most parishes currently try to
retain the headstones and kerbs in position for a century but
it is a fact of life that the land must be dug over and reused again and
again.
In
one corner of the churchyard
at Chawleigh, a few of the old stones have been carefully lifted and
stacked against the walls of the Church in a way that makes them readable and gives some idea of where
the original burial plots might have been. |
Gravestones against the Church wall
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Chawleigh
Church 1842
A
lithograph by William Spreat
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