In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious

een often used as an epitaph for a village blacksmith. I have met with the lines in two or three versi

and hammer

oo have lost

inct, my fo

dust my v

spent, my i

drove, my w

chyard at Cobham, a village made famous by the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, is a gravestone recording the death of a carpenter, having at the head a shield beari

-AT COBH

ansden, carpen

h, 1

semblance to each other that we find in other series of gravestones, but have occasional variations, as in the following specimen, which mixes up somewhat grotesquely the emblems

7.-AT

ell, died 1724,

d on their gravestones, and this will be found to be the case in a number of instances. The following illustrati

.-AT FR

is effaced, but

be

to commemorate. The old-fashioned plough is cut only in single profile, but is not an ineffective emblem.

at Sutton at Hone, near Dartford, is

AT SUTTON

rthfield, died

71 ye

ng to associate with his calling the tools engraved on his headstone. They were

0.-AT

, Bricklayer,

ged 48

as a schoolmaster at Beckenham, and appears to have been well liked by his pupils, who, when he prematurely died, placed a complimentary epit

.-AT BE

of John Cade,

One skilled in

ensive ing

ersally belov

ted, August 2

eral of his s

and gratitude

ted this in

rth an

nature, learni

m belov'd of

y inhabitant who was a gardener and presumably a beekeeper als

.-AT GR

King, upward

his parish, d

ged 84

out of town and almost undiscovered until a comparatively recent time. Its eighteenth-century gravestones are consequently for the most part rustic and primitive. The skull and other bones here depicted,

.-AT WE

es, died 1754,