Country diary: These gravestones have a story to tell

Sandy, Bedfordshire: The aptly named Graves family of the mansion house next door to the church found a place in heaven by moving the earthA century and more ago, many overfilled country churchyards had invisible "No vacancies" signs, diverting the dead from the expanding villages and nascent towns to the outlying fields, which then grew coffins instead of potatoes. Even so, exceptions were made for a privileged few, so that their remains could lie in the church graveyard itself.A local Tory grandee had four stakes in his future in St Swithin's churchyard. When I visited the plot during his later years, I sometimes wondered if the old man ever came to see the rectangle of wooden nubs that marked out where he would spend his death. Now, 13 years after I heard the bells toll, it gives me a start to see how quickly the once off-white gravestone of a reputedly courteous and principled politician has weathered into grey and green. Continue reading...