Gravestones, Tombs & Memorials (8 page)

FIG 3.4:
By the late 17th century, tombs often have recessed fielded panels. Some exceptional ones have sculpture and Classical decoration; most, like the examples above, are still plain with heavy ledgers.

FIG 3.5:
Although chest tombs are sometimes referred to as table tombs, these are more correctly a type which has no side panels but has the top ledger stone supported upon columns. They are popular in the north as in this example from Easby Abbey, Yorks.

FIG 3.6:
Two chest tombs from the mid 18th century which now have corner posts sculptured into classical pilasters (flat columns) and less prominent ledgers on top. The top example has elaborate Rococo carving.

FIG 3.7:
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries there was a wide range of shapes and styles of chest tombs. Early ones had delicate carvings (bottom right), later types often were brutally simple (middle left). Sarcophagus forms (top left) and pedestals (top right) were popular as were hipped lids as on a casket (left-hand examples). Some were eclectic (middle right) with table tomb, sarcophagus and urn all in one!

FIG 3.8:
Pedestal tombs with a smaller plan and taller body became popular from the early 19th century. This example with original railings is made from cast iron.

Victorians preferred height to girth, and their tombs soared up into the sky rather than spread across the ground, a form which better suited the Gothic types of decoration. Gone was the Classical restraint of the previous period, now these spire-like memorials mounted on pedestals were encrusted with pointed arches, quatrefoils, crockets and columns, the latter often in a contrasting polished stone. Pattern books gave the Victorian monumental carver a vast array of forms and in between the ranks of lancet gravestones and obelisks in cemeteries can be found thin, wide, and occasionally completely odd tombs. The conventional chest tomb was also used, early in the period still in a Classical style, later with Gothic pointed arches down the sides.

FIG 3.9:
A drawing of a late 18th-century (right) and a mid 19th-century tomb (left). Shallow, delicate Adams-style decoration was popular on the earlier chest tomb while pointed Gothic details dominate the vertical Victorian pedestal type.

FIG 3.10:
Examples of Victorian pedestal tombs with the Classical style (left) and Gothic (middle and right). Note the mix of different stones in each memorial.

FIG 3.11:
Victorian chest tombs with pointed arched panels and flat ledgers can still be found despite the dominance of vertical memorials. In the latter decades of the century the space taken up and the ostentatious statement they made meant these tombs fell from favour and after the First World War were a rarity.

Cotswold Tombs

There are few corners of the country where some form of elaborate tomb will not be found, but there is an unusual concentration of finely-carved and richly-sculptured types in the Cotswolds and south Gloucestershire. Many wealthy individuals had grown rich on the back of the wool trade in this area and two distinctive types of memorial were commissioned by them. In the eastern part (mainly in Oxfordshire) the Bale tomb with its distinctive ribbed, semi-circular top was dominant. This strange form along the top of the ledger was believed to represent a bale of wool as many of the tombs were of merchants who traded in it, hence the name. It is more likely, however, to be a representation of the rippled sheet of fabric (the pall) which was draped over a semi-circular metal frame (the hearse) erected over the body during medieval funeral services (it was only from around the 17th century that the hearse became the vehicle for transporting the coffin).

FIG 3.12:
Bale tombs with their distinctive semi-circular capping stone at Burford, Oxon. The concave ends featured scallops (above) and also cherubs and hourglasses.

FIG 3.13:
The grooves on the bale could run side to side or diagonally, sometimes split into two opposing sections. Gadrooned bales have a large curved upper edge to the ledger with matching grooves.

In the western part and down into the Severn Vale, a different form prevailed on the finest memorials, with the ends of rectangular tombs flanked by a pair of ‘S'-shaped brackets forming a distinctive lyre shape. Many of these are encrusted in all manner of contemporary sculpture and it is clear to see why they are known as Flamboyant tombs.

By the late 18th century the familiar double cube form of chest tomb was falling from fashion in the Cotswolds as it was across the country. The new form of tomb was based on a shorter rectangular, square or round plan with a taller body on top. These pedestal tombs have more restrained decoration with stepped lids and urns on the crest and domes on the round ones; the latter were particularly popular in this region and had the nickname of Tea Caddies.