Roget's Thesaurus

Roget's Thesaurus is a dictionary of synonyms devised by the British physician, natural theologian and lexicographer, Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869). It was first published in 1852 (with 15,000 words) and has been in print and regularly updated and expanded since that time. It now features 443,000 words and is the most widely used thesaurus among English-speaking people. On a recent walk on the Malvern Hills we took a detour to the church in West Malvern to see Roget's very plain gravestone.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: iPhone

C18 cartouche gravestone

To my mind the design of gravestones hit a peak in the C18. In the C17, as gravestones grew in popularity, they exhibited a naivety of subject and execution. In the C19 mass production, Gothic influences and grandiosity overwhelmed the original and innovative designs that can still be seen. C20 gravestones are usually more modest, machine-made and make use of too wide a variety of stone. The C18 used a limited palette of (usually local) stone, ornament and lettering. The example above, at St Michael, Walford, Herefordshire, has the typical winged putto head and foliage arranged as a cartouche. Rising damp has obscured the lower lettering, but above it is crisp and shows interesting abbreviations. If you look carefully you can still discern parts of the faint, scratched, guide-lines to keep the lettering level and of the correct height.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: iPhone

A gravestone puzzle

It's not unusual to come across individualistic gravestones - death seems to attract such things. However, I've never seen one like this before. It is in the graveyard of St Mary's church, Monmouth. The grid of letters forms a kind of acrostic that has the name of the deceased in the form of "HERE LIES JOHN RENIE", in such a way that the inscription can be read in 32,032 (or is it 45,760) different ways. What made a humble house painter, or perhaps his relatives, commemorate him in such a way? This website has some interesting ideas.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Churchyard putti

One of the characteristics of Lincolnshire churchyards is the limestone gravestones of the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century. These heavy slabs, once set vertically but now often leaning alarmingly, carry the usual details of the deceased. However, they also feature the decorative carving that was fashionable at the time. This includes swags, cartouches, leaves, paterae and putti in profusion. Putti (singular "putto") are cherubic heads with wings.They are said to represent the omnipresence of God. The pair above are in a Stamford, Lincolnshire, churchyard. The weathering of the stone is slowly wearing away the detail but enough remains to identify the subject.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100