What I like most about them is their size and subtlety, and their quiet subdued beauty. They are only about 12-18″ tall and yet for me stand out as being the most powerful memorials in this churchyard.

One of my current obsessions is looking at 17th and 18th Century memorials, and Norfolk has a fine selection of these. Here are a few I photographed recently in Coltishall.

I install my own memorial work all over Britain, and am always looking out for good examples of 17-18th century carving. Some stones from this period are very finely executed by master carvers that also studied typefaces, whereas other more “naive” examples were carved by jobbing masons, these are often more powerful in their impact, and the designs are often less carefully concieved. Often the carver will start the lettering top left and just see what happens in terms of how the words fit the stone. Some of the examples above are beautiful and obviously very carefully set out and carved, whereas others are less refined, the imagery is more direct and less “pretty”. If this is something you’re interested in I have many more photographs like these on my flickr pages. This is an ongoing project, and I am adding to these continually.

While I was in Coltishall I saw the above plaque outside on the church wall. This is an impressive piece of work with a lot of letter-cutting, (but it was rather difficult to photograph in the flat light). The wording is what made me want to post this image though, and it reads thus:

Sacred to the Memory of SIDAY HAWES and ELIZABETH his wife.
SIDAY HAWES was born at BURY in Suffolk, 8th October 1748
and died at 6th October 1827, in the 79th Year of his Age.
He was a Man of excellent understanding and great moral worth,
pious, just, and conscientious.
ELIZABETH, his wife, was the only daughter of HUGGINS PORSON,
parish clerk of EAST RUSTON and was Sister of RICHARD PORSON, late Greek
Professor in the University of CAMBRIDGE.
She was born 27th April, 1756, married 27th November 1786, and
died 7th March, 1842 in the 86th Year of Her Age.
She had by nature a strong and capacious mind, which she
found time to cultivate amidst the hardships of her early
life, and the various employments of her later Years:
whilst her piety and benevolence made her take delight in relieving
the sufferings of the poor, for she had both seen and felt what
those sufferings were. And thus, to the day of her Death,
she shared her own prosperity with the
class from which she sprang.
Happy herself she tried to make those around her happy, and with
firm and cheerful trust in the promises of our blessed Saviour,
she looked forward to Death, not as an evil but as a
glorious change of existence.
“O DEATH, WHERE IS THY STING? O GRAVE WHERE IS THY VICTORY?”
They had Seven children, two of them died young, and were buried
in this Church at the East end of the South Aisle.

While I was there I had a look around (as usual) and I found several interesting stones from the 1850′s-1890′s. This is not always a good period for memorial design and carving but the workshop that made these obviously enjoyed shaping stone and making really nice carvings.

The shapes of the stones are similar too, but I’ve noticed the shape is often quite free. The two on the right for example are obviously drawn by hand and then masoned. The one on the bottom right is asymmetrical and seems to fit around the carving almost. It was a great period for carving in my opinion, and the York stone examples have weathered really well, much better than the limestone examples from the same time.

The village church has many wonderful slate memorials, some very accomplished pieces of carving and some more crude. The earliest was from 1673.
here are a few examples but there are more on my flickr pages.

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I recently travelled through Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire on my way back to Norfolk from Worcestershire and took the opportunity to visit the Vale of Belvoir (pronounced beaver). I have known for years that there were many slate memorials in the East Midlands and recently became interested (if not obsessed) with them, especially those from the late 17th and early 18th century. There are many ornate and beautifully carved examples and due to the longevity of slate they are amazingly well preserved.

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There are bascially two different kinds to my eye, some more crudely carved and “naive” in appearance, and others that are beautifully executed and show the carver/designer’s knowledge of different typefaces, and the masons use of type sample books. I think both these kinds are beautiful but I am more drawn to the cruder ones which include angel carvings known as “The Vale of Belvoir Angels”. There’s a great book studying these memorials written by Pauline and Bernard Heathcote (available at amazon). It lists the memorials and locations and has many photographs.

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What I find particularly interesting is that these stones were not set out or drawn up before the carver started work and you can see this by the way some words are truncated or split and some letters carved really small above the line to fit in. What seems really odd to me is that some of the lettering is raised and therefore the background is being carved away leaving them proud, and even the carving of these was just started on the left hand edge and made to fit, one way or another. It is worth having a close look at some of these. Below is a detail from one.

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I have uploaded some more pictures on my flickr pages. Click here to see them.

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The best information I found online is this:
from the TYPEFOUNDRY blog pages

there’s nothing I can add to this, it’s very thorough and has further links within it.

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I haven’t seen anything quite like this before, it is stunning. The inscription states at the top that “This table is erected in memory of William Briggs”. I am not sure exactly what this refers to but perhaps an altar table that is no longer there. At the top there is an iron fixing lug which has nothing attached to it. I’ll try and find out more……

I think this is a beautiful and impressive piece of design and carving.

On my website you can see some if you click here. There will be more on my youtube channel too.

If you look closely you’ll see that the spacing in general is really poor, for example the HE space right at the beginning of the inscription is very wide and yet the word spacing is relatively very tight for example: here/lies the/body who/died. But despite all this, or maybe because of all this, I like it.
The re’sno way I couldg et a way with it thou gh.