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This is a very long article running to some 3 plus printed pages - y Notes and Queries Vol. 3 2nd S. (69) Apr 25 1857 Page 321 (2nd S. iii, 321) The Laudable attempt of your correspondent W.H.W.T., to suggest some means for the preservation from further mutilation of the inestimable records usually know as the Parish Registers merits the hearty thanks of all. To rescue them from their present perilous depositories, often more whimsical than secure, deserves thanks and encouragement from every grade. It is certainly unnecessary to swell the catalogue of wanton and even mischievous means that have been take to lead to their destruction, but it is certain unscrupulous and often successful efforts have been made to thwart their important evidence. The following singular example falling under my own observation is too important to suppress while attempting to prove the carelessness, to use no harsher term, of those to whose custody the have been confided. In visiting the village school at Colton it was discovered that the "Psalters" of the children were covered with the leaves of the parish register; some of these were recovered and replaced in the church chest, but many were totally obliterated and put away. This discovery led to further investigation, which brought to light a practice of the perish clerk and school master of the day, who to certain favoured "goodies" of the village gave the parchment leaves for hutkins for their knitting pins, being more convenient and durable than those of brown papers. Your correspondent, K (2nd, S., iii, p. 366) has enlarged upon this subject by his remarks on the mutilations, or to say the least of it the misapplication of the grave and tombstones to purposes perfectly irrelevant to the design contemplated by those who in pious grief raised them at cost to the memories of their departed friends and relations, thus furthering the common destiny of all things. To your correspondent's suggestions let me ask, why nare not the children in the parish schools employed to collect the inscriptions in every depository of the dead ? Sure such exercises would instruct at once morally and religiously, and be the means of guiding the youthful mind to veneration for things and persons that are passed away, and a most lamentable vacuum in the peasant's mind would be filled with a patriot's ardour. The rector of his curate could not deem the time mis-spent he might devote to correct the juvenile efforts to decipher those moss-eaten and time-worn inscriptions by the common process : to record those in the dead language would certainly be congeneal to his taste. The figuring of the floors in Tuscan borders with encaustic tiles is undoubtedly pretty, but the old gray tombstone, even with the denuded matrix, are the "mute and awful heralds of a future state," far more befitting the sacred etc Notes and Queries Vol. 4 2nd S. (85) Aug 15 1857 Page 136 In many churches repairs were done by masons for their own convenience and profit, by using tombstones from the churchyard. In the porch of Lyme Church were the oolitic slabs of the tomb erected to the memory of William Hewling, executed for his connexion with the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion. All these were used just for the mason's benefit about 50 years ago, after having been stored away in the great porch by Dr. Tucker, the curate and minister of the parish. A large tomb to the memory of Arthur Tucker at the head of the churchyard, disappeared about 30 years since. The slabs of Portland stone of which it was composed, were used by the masons for domestic work about the town, for hearthstones and such like. I gave the alarm, but none were recovered, which is not surprising. There was no resident vicar, and the minister was a very aged man. G.R. L.Notes and Queries Vol. 4 2nd S. (88) Sept 5 1857 Page 198 Notes and Queries Vol. 4 2nd S. (88) Sept 5 1857 Page 199 ^ back to top ^ |