Crossroads and Characters

70. ST. SERF'S AND THE COMMON MAN.

One might think that old churches like St. Serf's have been surrounded by churchyards bristling with headstones since shortly after the churches were built. But it wasn't until the early 1600's that churchyards began to take on their now familiar image.

Until then only the graves of people of rank were marked with memorials and these lay within the church itself. Commoners were buried in the churchyard in graves without permanent markers.

A law of 1560 forbade further burials in churches, but often the gentry were still able to arrange inside burials. As the 16th century ended, a few stone memorials began to be placed by gentry in the churchyard. These were in the same style as the monuments inside: floorslabs or chest-like tombs or even murals built into the churchyard wall.

Starting about 1600, a few wealthier merchants, tradesmen and tenant farmers were buried in churchyard graves marked with stone memorials imitating those of the gentry.

A major change in burial practice occurred when upright headstones, cheaper than other memorials, began to be used by common folk. The earliest of these headstones recorded in England seems to have been 1640.

An even earlier headstone, primitively carved, was noted in Scotland by authors Betty Willsher and Doreen Hunter. That headstone, dated 1623, a memorial to one Thomas Rutherford, was in St. Serf's churchyard, Dunning. Lamentably, that stone has since disappeared. But the next oldest headstone known is the one in this photograph, and it is also in St. Serf's. It is dated 1624, and was erected by a Dunning farm family with a locally still well-known name (now of slightly different spelling). It reads 'Here lies the corpse of James Dowgall, Lawful son of Andrew Dowgall of Balwhandy. Died 1623. Age -- (obscured).'