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THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 



indication of the date of manufacture and erection 

 of the memorial, though on some occasions 

 erection dates are explicitly given. ' As a single stone 

 can be used to commemorate a number of 

 individuals who died at different times, it is the 

 whole inscription which was placed on the stone 

 before or as it was first erected that is crucial for 

 dating. The first text to be inscribed can be termed 

 the primary text. This consists of any introductory 

 phrases and may contain details of one or more 

 deceased. In most cases, the primary text includes 

 the primary commemoration or commemorations, 

 the first recorded death or deaths on the memorial. 

 However, where the primary text is merely a 

 statement about the monument or plot, defining a 

 family burial space, then the first deaths 

 commemorated will not be in the primary 

 inscription, but rather are recorded in a later 

 inscriptional event. This first commemorative role 

 for the monument should still then be termed the 

 primary commemoration. Many memorials have 

 several inscriptional events, often spread over 

 generations. Subsequent inscriptional events are 

 usually also commemorative, and can be termed 

 secondary, tertiary and later commemorations. They 

 are very important in the study of monument use, 

 and the social value of memorials. They indicate 

 attitudes to kinship and social relations, both 

 explicitly through statements of relationships, and 

 implicitly by who is placed with whom on the stone, 

 and in what order. The full set of commemorations 

 also gives indications of the patterns of burial and 

 commemoration within the graveyard, though the 

 fact that someone is commemorated on a stone does 

 not mean that they were buried in that plot, or even 

 in that graveyard. 



RE-USE OF MEMORIALS 



The normal assumption with regard to graveyard 

 commissioning and dating is that the text on the 

 memorial relates to the choice of that stone from 

 the mason, and its relatively rapid inscription and 

 erection in the graveyard. It is possible, however, 

 for memorials to be re-used. There are examples of 

 medieval slabs being used in the post-Reformation 

 period (Sunley 1999), but memorials of a later date 

 also suffered the same fate. These were normally 

 large stones and often the earlier inscription is still 

 visible; it also occurred inside churches, with ledger 

 stones. No examples of complete text removal and 

 re-use of decorated headstones has been 



archaeologically recorded from Britain, but a 

 documentary source has suggested this possibility 

 for Cherhill (Plenderleath 1887, 299-300), : and 

 this has been linked to study of the surviving 

 headstones in the graveyard. 



The Reverend W.C. Plenderleath, who was 

 Rector of Cherhill from 1860 to 1891, wrote a two 

 volume work in 1887 which included a discussion 

 of the churchyard (Plenderleath 1887). 3 The 

 relevant passage is worth publishing in full: 



I have but just completed a transcript of all the 

 inscriptions now existing in Cherhill church-yard, 

 which I have added to my book of parochial indices. 

 And I have come across indications in the course of 

 that work of an amount of carelessness on the part of 

 my predecessors which I would not have believed 

 possible. There is a headstone in the churchyard, in 

 which the ornamentation of the stone looks like the 

 work of early in the last century, while the inscription 

 bears date 1824, and appears from the sharpness of 

 the cutting to have been actually incised at a still later 

 period. I happened to mention this to the clerk. He 

 said in reply that he had known of several stones 

 having been taken up, with the express permission of 

 my penultimate predecessor, (who resigned the living 

 in 1840: - I will not insult his name, for he was a man 

 whom I knew well and greatly respected: -)' these 

 stones to have been carried into Calne, the old 

 inscription entirely clipped off and a new inscription 

 cut, then to have been brought back and set up again 

 in the churchyard. Subsequent enquiries have 

 established the fact that several similar permissions 

 were given also by my immediate predecessor. 5 And 

 the most curious thing is that although it is technically 

 an ecclesiastical offence to have done this without 

 the sanction of the ordinary, yet it does not appear to 

 have been, as far as I have been able to discover, a 

 civil offence at all, or punishable by any process known 

 to the common law. I can only say that I think we 

 shall all agree that if such really be the fact, it is 

 decidedly a casus omissus, - a malum sine remedio. 

 (Plenderleath 1887, 299-300) 



This description of headstone re-use suggests 

 a practice at Cherhill which lasted over two 

 incumbents and therefore over several decades in 

 the early to middle part of the 1 9th century. The 

 stones chosen for re-use were already of some age, 

 according to Plenderleath. Indeed, it is likely that 

 they belonged to the first phase of widespread 

 headstone use in the churchyard, as few memorials 

 were erected in churchyards before the late 18th 

 century. 6 



