Abner William Brown

“ This would indicate a long period to have elapsed between the use of the kistvaens and the erection of the Norman building, during which the locality had been used by the villagers as a burial ground, in ignorance of the tier of kistvaen interments below: and used so long that the Norman masons found the soil sufficiently solid to build upon, even above the second era of graves. These graves of the upper tier, which had already become solid within a century or less from the Conquest, must in a Saxon, or perhaps a British village, have been Saxon. ”

“ In the lowlands of Scotland it is still pronounced kist, and retains in common use its original meaning of a burial chest. Among old-fashioned families in the lowlands of Scotland, that part of a funeral which precedes the removal of the body from the house is a religious service, and is still called in remote districts the kistening, or kisting, and in other places the chesting, or the coffining.
But of old, the kisting took place in the grave-yard, and not in the house, for coffins, in our sense of them, were not used. ”

“ The Christians have always buried with the face towards the rising sun, in token of their hope of resurrection at the last day; a primitive and significant Christian habit which one regrets to see occasionally disregarded, by the bodies being laid, like those of suicides, in all directions. In the tenants of the Pytchley kistvaens, the crossing of the arms, together with the east and west position, make it difficult to question their being Christians. ”

“ Urn- burial, which presupposes burning the dead, probably only prevailed in Britain while the Romans ruled: it does not seem to have been customary here before their arrival, nor after the population had become Christian: instances have, it is said, been discovered where Saxon Christians in England must have been interred by burning; yet as a general rule, when a nation has become Christian, burning the dead has ceased. The kistvaens in Pytchley were therefore probably either prior to Roman dates, or subsequent to the prevailing of Christianity. ”

“ In rebuilding the Decorated chancel-arch, which had evidently been rebuilt in a bad style more than once before, and of which the north capital had sunk seven inches below the level of its south companion, we found the cause of its sinking was a kistvaen of a person about twelve years old, nearly two feet below the foundation. In underpinning various parts of the church walls which were leaning, numerous instances appeared in which the walls had been built across or along the kistvaens according to their position ”

“ It is a hollow, 5 feet 11 inches long, and about 10 inches deep, rudely excavated in the coarse and friable yellow lime- stone gault, or kale, (as it is here called,) which lies immediately over the limestone rock. The excavation is somewhat in the shape of a human body, rounded at the head, swelling at the shoulders to 13 inches, and at the elbows to 17, and contracting again to a few inches at the toes. ”

“ In all the kistvaens the following points uniformly presented themselves to our notice. 1. The skeletons were lying east and west, or nearly so; the feet being to the east, as is usual in our own times. 2. They were lying on their right sides, the left shoulder and leg being considerably higher than the others; which explains why the coffins are so narrow, and especially at the bottom: the faces were thus looking at once towards the east and towards the south. ”

“ If so, the subject is one of great historical interest, and the mode of interment one which will doubtless be found to have been practised in many other places on a similarly large scale. Possibly others have already described it, but I have never happened to meet with any description of it.
The position of bodies and graves has varied with different nations, but I have not met with any satisfactory discussion of the whole question. The Greeks made the bodies, it is said, face the east; the Jews turned the face to Jerusalem ”

“ Two however were nearly saved, one by throwing a slight arch over it, and the other by turning the course of the drain. This last, though by no means the best, or that which I should have selected for preservation, has been marked and guarded by a low sunk wall, and covered with heavy slabs, so as to be hereafter accessible without great labour and I hope that no future churchwarden will sweep it away for the sake of the slabs. ”