Occasional Magazine N.S. Vol.1 No.1 (January 1980)
Milford Churchyard by Rev. S. G. Hooper. Changing burial customs are explained in relation to the churchyard at Milford that has existed since the end of the 11th century and whose enlargements and re-use from the original one acre are traced to the 1950s. For hundreds of years initially the open space was used for things like games or fairs, as there were no headstones or mounded graves. Influential people were buried beneath “ledgers” (coffin-shaped stone slabs) and ordinary folk in a single community grave. For Milford this was probably the mound near the South door, now surmounted by a cross restored as a memorial to Col. Peter Hawker. In the late 16th century individual graves with headstones came into fashion for all, but up to the early 18th century coffins were not interred outside the Church. The corpse was brought by cart to the lych gate, laid on the lych stone (table) in a shroud and transferred to the parish coffin for the first part of the Service. The coffin was carried into the Church or to the mound grave for committal, the corpse being buried and the coffin returned for future use. A desire for table tombs in the late 18th and early 19th centuries shows as two clusters in the churchyard. Persons of high rank were normally buried in the Church; this eventually spread to the lower orders until forbidden at the end of the 18th century, though memorial tablets continued. Parish priests had the privilege of burial in the Church beneath the chancel. Pathways in the churchyard from the four points of the compass indicate the routes worshippers took to return home after Church services. Punctual arrival was ensured by the sequence of bells rung beforehand. The paper concludes with three examples of legal restrictions on the use of churchyards.
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