Historic Churches 2020

32 BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON HISTORIC CHURCHES 27 TH ANNUAL EDITION churchyards or repair holes in churchyard walls. As a consequence, many burials lost their grave covers and are now hidden beneath plain paving stones. Soldiers stationed at cathedrals during the English Civil War in the 1640s were regularly accused of desecrating graves. While allegations were often exaggerated for propaganda purposes, excavations at Canterbury Cathedral in 1993 revealed nave burials had indeed been looted during this period and human remains dumped in a pit beneath the nave. Similar ‘dumps’ of human remains have been found in other churches and cathedrals dating to the 17th–18th centuries, suggesting that many burials were heavily disturbed by Civil War activity and/or reflooring programmes. 19th CENTURY ‘Restoration’ campaigns by the Victorians, especially in cathedrals, removed many older tombs, graves and memorials too damaged to salvage, awkwardly placed, or that didn’t fit the new decorative schema. Also, as at Chester Cathedral, building contractors were occasionally allowed to keep grave markers as part payment and some may have found their way into other local buildings. During restorations, rare survivals of medieval saints' shrines, which had been dismantled and buried during the Reformation, were sometimes discovered and reassembled. Examples of this can be seen at Chester Cathedral (St Werburgh’s shrine); St Alban’s Cathedral (St Alban and St Amphibalus’ shrines) and Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford (St Frideswide's shrine). The Burial Acts of the 1850s banned intramural (interior) church burials for reasons of space and hygiene. This is generally still the case today, albeit with some exceptions. With the rise of public or ‘garden’ cemeteries and new crematoriums in the later 19th century, many people were now commemorated with a church wall memorial but buried at an entirely different location. Although archbishops, bishops, deans, (and their spouses and children in some cases) could apply for intramural interments, some chose burial (including cremation burial) in the churchyard or cloister garth, with a memorial (anything from a small plaque to an empty tomb) inside the cathedral. Victorian effigy tombs often copied or simplified medieval versions but with increasingly realistic portraiture of the deceased. 20th and 21st CENTURIES Interior commemoration in the 20th and 21st centuries has been pragmatic, using repairs, remodelling, new fixtures, windows and furniture as alternatives to traditional monuments. Furthermore, as modern interior monuments are no longer expected to cover or even mark a grave, they do not need to be a certain size and shape. Ships’ bells, aeroplane propellers, mosaics and numerous artefacts and art works are among the many new types of memorials introduced in the 20th and 21st centuries. New styles, such as transparent memorials at Exeter Cathedral, have appeared. Cremated remains of eligible clergy have also been placed within stone benches inside some church buildings creating a new use for ancient features. LOCATING BURIALS TODAY Multiple disturbances to burials and mortuary monuments have left many churches like a hall of mirrors. Some church and churchyard tombs may also be spolia – that is to say, comprised of different pieces of tombs, memorials, and even altar tables and pieces of shrines, as a way of conserving fragments of dismantled monuments. They may even have no historical relation to any burials they claim to mark. The function of tombs could alter over time, being repurposed as cenotaphs or converted into war memorials. Their appearance could also significantly change as graves were looted, brasses stripped and grave slabs were displaced. And tombs could migrate, with those originally designed for churchyards being relocated indoors while others staying in their original position find themselves enclosed by later church extensions. Similarly, interior tombs could be moved to the churchyard when space was scarce or the tomb in poor condition or unwanted. Archival evidence can be equally frustrating. Burial registers (made mandatory in 1538) did not need to record burial locations, and if they did, entries were often vague (such as: ‘north’, ‘by the door’, or just ‘nave’). Wills might record a requested burial location, but there was no guarantee this would be provided, and even less certainty they would not be moved later. However, monument catalogues compiled by a church or an antiquarian may indicate if tombs or burials have moved. Compounding this further are charnel deposits from all periods, some representing hundreds or even thousands of individuals exhumed ahead of building work or to make room for new interments inside churches and churchyards. For example, in 1512 thousands of individuals were exhumed from Ripon Cathedral’s churchyard (then a minster) ahead of work to widen the nave. The bones filled the Norman-era crypt and were stacked behind a wall east of the choir too. More bones lay below the crypt floor to a depth of 4ft [1.2m], and even more had to be reburied later in the churchyard. Like many church charnel collections, it was likely locked away or blocked up in the late 16th or 17th centuries, then ‘rediscovered’ in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The charnel was thinned out, retaining long bones and almost 10,000 skulls and rearranged into a display in 1843, becoming a popular visitor attraction. It was subsequently closed to the public by local authorities and the bones reburied in the churchyard in 1865–7, reflecting increasing distaste for unburied human remains by the later 19th century. But mass pits of fragmented human remains are likely awaiting discovery under many Displaced monuments in the cloisters of Chester Cathedral