Graveyard & Cemetery
Inscriptions on gravestones in St Mary's Church graveyard dating back to the 17th century can still be found today. The oldest decipherable surviving gravestone dates back to 1685. Many of the gravestones are made in slate from the Swithland deposits and some from Welsh slate. There are ancient memorials lining the path to the church doors, with their inscriptions still visible. For those interested in the various legible inscriptions please refer to detailed documentation by Samuel Stewart which may be found in the 'From Asgothporp To Osgathorpe' document that can be found here
THE GRAVEYARD
Alongside the path from Church Lane to the main door of the Church one of the oldest decipherable gravestones in Leicestershire can be found, propped up at the back of the lavender border.
It reads: ‘Jane the daughter of George Coulton elder died year 1685’.
This may not seem to be particularly old, but grave markers in stone were not in common usage until after 1534 when Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in Rome and, via the Act of Supremacy, made himself Head of the Protestant Church of England.
Prior to this time only the very wealthy could afford any grave markers, either inside or outside the church. The bodies of the poorer people were placed in unmarked communal pits and not necessarily in the churchyard. However, the soul was more important than the body and clergy could be paid to say masses for the souls of the dead. This commissioning of masses was not allowed in the aftermath of the Act of Supremacy and so another form of acknowledging the dead needed to be found. As such, the practice of burying people individually in external consecrated churchyards became more common. This allowed both body and soul to be respected and for individual families to erect memorials, which initially might have been wooden but quickly swapped to a more durable material as various types of stone were being increasingly quarried.
Early stone markers were often flat and their main purpose was to prevent foxes or other wild animals from digging up the body. However, by the 1670’s, professional stone masons had become established and carved headstones began to appear. The longevity of such stones was highly dependent on the type of stone used, weather conditions and the enlargement of church buildings. In the graveyard at Osgathorpe there are quite a few gravestones which are totally or partially illegible. The one laid in the chancel was likely to have been moved from an external position when the chancel was added in 1860.
Inevitably over time as populations grew, Church graveyards became full and new cemeteries on the outskirts of settlements became the trend, as the one on Breedon Lane just outside of the main village of Osgathorpe demonstrates.
Of the remaining legible old stones in Osgathorpe churchyard, the majority are carved on to local Swithland slate. This was used because it was locally available, durable, split easily into stones and was easy to carve. Eventually, once the canals and railways could transport Welsh slate in large quantities at low prices, the demand for local slate diminished and all quarrying at Swithland had ended by 1887. It is quite easy to determine for each gravestone the type of slate that was used because the ones in Swithland slate have rough, uneven backs while those in Welsh slate have smooth backs. This may have had something to do with the way Swithland slate was split by a handsaw. A fine example of an intricately carved slate gravestone can be found on the split gravestone near to the entrance of the Church.
The cremation of bodies in the United Kingdom resulted from the overcrowding of graveyards, particularly in urban areas, and the resultant pressure from the Cremation Society. These factors led to the building of the first crematorium in Woking in 1885, which was fully regulated into law by the Cremation Act of 1902 and subsequently became the most common funeral choice by 1968. Today, just over 80% of funerals in England are cremations, with the current growth trend being in unattended cremations.
1685 grave of Jane, daughter of George Coulton
Photograph courtesy Samuel T Stewart
Split gravestone near the church entrance
Photograph courtesy Samuel T Stewart
THE CEMETERY
The distance of a funeral procession away from the north-east corner of the village, across the Ashby Road, the cemetery is accessed through a stone porch that opens into a peaceful scene bordered with a small orchard. While ashes can still be interred at St Mary’s Church, local burials now take place here.
Land for the new cemetery was bought by the Parish Council in 1936. The two documents dated 2nd and 7th April 1936 show the transfer of the land from T F Siddons to the Parish Council.
Another document called ‘Sentence of Consecration’ signed by Cyril Bardsley, Lord Bishop of Leicester refers to the plot of land purchased in 1936 as 'now being properly fenced off, having suitable entrance gates' and records the Secretary of State approval and the Minister of Health sanctioning the land for cemetery use.
The consecration procedure was started in 1935 whilst the Revd T Watson was Rector of Osgathorpe. However, he having left the Parish in January 1938 (to Monyash, Derbyshire) the Revd F W Walker, the Vicar of Hugglescote, took over the consecration arrangements.
It was consecrated for burials on 26 February 1938. The first being John Henry Green who died on the 11th June of that year as can been seen in the burial records shown. He was a lorry driver and died aged 40.
The next entry in the burial records shows that of Sergeant Samuel Bartholomew Albert Smith of Osgathorpe whose WW2 Commonwealth War Grave can be found here.
