Relhan Collection : 113 Chesterton. Two ancient coffin slabs on E wall of churchyard

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>Sunk in the churchyard itself are 3 C13/14 coffin lids with foliate designs which fit this drawing and (<b>114</b>). However, the E wall and parts of S wall include many architectural fragments, and stretches of wall are topped with grave slabs which are too weathered to have decoration or lettering visible. The walls are also covered in thick ivy etc in many areas and therefore difficult to record. Monks from Vercelli and from Barnwell Priory could explain some of these coffins, but Bowtell also mentions coffin lids found near Cambridge Castle in C17, which were removed to Chesterton churchyard, illustrated by Kerrich <i>(British Library Add. MS. 6730, </i>fos. 1-2), and stone coffins were numerous enough and of so little value to post-Reformation parishioners that they could be treated as useful building material. Additional notes by Cole (1769) say that ‘on top of the churchyard wall to the N and just opposite Mr Nightingale’s house, lie 6 or 7 very curious old gravestones with deep ridges to some of them.... they have all of them very curious engraved or embossed crosses upon them,’ and in 1778 he describes and sketches (while having dinner with friends) 3 coffin stones, 2 steeply ridged and all with foliated crosses. This churchyard wall was removed during one of the later extensions of the churchyard. Evelyn-White also mentions coffin slabs with foliated designs forming coping of a churchyard wall but (1911) ‘<i>broken, worn and neglected’</i>. These are all post-Conquest and could well be some of those noted by Cole in Chesterton. They seem to have been found with their burials intact, as (<b>115</b>), but are now lost. Similar slabs can be found in the church and in the churchyard, as well as on walls.</p><p>Evelyn-White 1911; Fox 1922; Palmer 1932 </p></p>