Coffin roads and corpse ways

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Richard Stone, from Barton under Needwood, investigates the history behind coffin roads, corpse ways and parish practices.

THE idea of a parish, a collection of townships and hamlets, paying tithes to support a communal priest has its roots in Anglo-Saxon times.

Parochial responsibilities grew throughout the Tudor Age and, from the beginning of the 17th century, parishes began to replace the manorial system as the unit of local administration.

Local life centred on the parish church and attendance was compulsory.

Rural parishes, in particular, tended to cover a large area. In the days before mechanised transport, going to church often meant a long journey.

For the privileged this might be on horseback or in a horse-drawn carriage (All Saints Church midway between Brailsford and Ednaston still has its stable). For the majority, however, the travel option was restricted to Shank’s Pony or “going by the marrow-bone stage”.

Although Chapels of Ease were sometimes established to conduct Sunday services in isolated villages, only the parish church was authorised to conduct burials.

Communities might invest in a wheeled bier to transport bodies but these were kept in the church and only used for short journeys. A few have survived and can still be seen, for example at the rear of the nave at St Chad’s, Longford.

When a parishioner in an outlying area died, arrangements had to be made to deliver the deceased to the parish church by whatever practical means possible.

If it could be afforded, a horse and cart was potentially the easiest and most convenient form of conveyance but that was subject to the state of local roads.

Many rural byways became impassable for weeks at a time in winter. For most people, even a coffin was a luxury.

Bodies were wrapped in woollen shrouds (an Act for Buying in Wool, passed in 1660 to support the wool trade, made it illegal to use any other material) and loved ones were physically carried on their last journey.

Traditional routes inevitably attracted macabre epithets. Coffin Roads and Corpse Ways were common used labels.

A rather more delicately named Procession Way, leading from Coton-in-the-Elms to Lullington (where the squat spire of All Saints’ Church is known locally as the “Spud”), threads between an avenue of trees whose overhanging boughs became known as the Devil’s Arches.

A Corpse Way followed by residents of Breaston, Draycott, Risley and Hopewell across the fields to St Chad’s at Church Wilne involved negotiating Dead Man’s Stile.

A journey of several miles was not uncommon. Regular stops had to be made, usually at places specially set aside for the purpose.

On well-used routes there might be a stone plinth or wooden bench where bodies could be temporarily laid down with due reverence for the departed.

Wayside crosses, most frequently erected as guides for travellers in remote areas or to commemorate an event, also occasionally served as designated rest stops.

In East Staffordshire, bearers walking from Hoar Cross to St Peter’s, Yoxall, traditionally took a breather in the shade of a venerable roadside tree, known as the Copt Oak, whose stunted branches formed a makeshift natural cross.

Part of the Coffin Road from Lea and Dethick to the parish church of All Saints at Ashover is lined with slabs of limestone.

The route follows a bridleway beneath the rocky prominence of Cocking Tor and joins Salter Lane, an old packhorse route, for the last stretch of the journey.

It then crosses the River Amber by a narrow stone bridge before climbing into the village via Hollow Lane.

The 1549 Prayer Book, introduced after the Reformation, instructed priests to begin burial services outside the church, after “Metyng the corpse at the church style”.

Lych gates (from the Old English word “lich” for corpse) were often built at the entrance to the churchyard to provide priests, waiting for the bearers to arrive, some protection from bad weather.

As the population steadily grew, parishes were subdivided.

New churches were built. Breaston had a church of its own by 1719. Coton-in-the-Elms had to wait until 1846 and the Victorian boom in church building.

Not everyone was allowed burial in the churchyard. Criminals and those who committed suicide were denied consecrated ground.

Quiet crossroads on rural boundaries were often chosen for such burials. Documentary evidence for this practice dates back to 1510.

It is almost certainly older, and continued until banned by Parliament in 1823.

An early-18th century guidepost at the intersection of two old drove roads on Bonsall Moor bears the inscription “1757 near this place lieth...” but the name has been worn away by time.

Lad’s Grave crossroads near Rosliston, in South Derbyshire, is said to be the place where young Philip Greensmith, hung for desertion in the Civil War, lies buried.

With increasing religious tolerance, Nonconformists made their own arrangements.

In 1888, John Furniss, of Moorhay Farm, Wigley, chose to bury his wife, Elizabeth, beneath a cairn of stones on the land where they had lived and farmed together rather than at the parish church of St Peter and St Paul in Old Brampton.

In an industrialised, more sophisticated, diverse and secular age, Coffin Roads were no longer needed. Routes fell out of use.

Within a generation or two their once important purpose was forgotten. Just a few of the old names survive, faint echoes of our past still resonating today.

Richard Stone’s latest book, The River Trent, is available in hardback from local bookshops, priced £14.99.