Why Is There a Roofed Gate at the Churchyard? The Coffin Waited There

A funeral procession carrying a body from the house to the church arrived at the churchyard entrance and stopped, and the priest met it there to begin the service before the body was carried in. That could take some time, and the party and the body were standing outside in whatever weather prevailed, so a roofed structure over the gate provided shelter for both. Many carry a stone or timber bench or a central slab on which the bier could be set down, since a coffin is heavy and the bearers had frequently walked a considerable distance from an outlying farm.

The form is simple and recognisable across many churchyards:

• •A gabled roof on timber posts, covering the gateway
• •Tiled, slated or shingled to match the local building tradition
• •A resting slab or benches along the sides
• •Gates that swing within the covered space
• •Sometimes a small chamber or an upper room
• •Frequently rebuilt, so the structure is later than the gateway

The arrangement made sense because of how burial worked before the nineteenth century. Coffins were not universal for ordinary people, who were frequently buried in a shroud alone, with a parish coffin used to carry the body to the grave and then reused, which means the body arriving at the gate was sometimes on an open bier. Bodies were kept at home for several days before the funeral, so the procession was a public event through the village. And burial had to be in the parish churchyard, so bodies were carried long distances along recognised routes, which acquired their own names and rights of way that occasionally still exist.

The churchyard entrance was a threshold in more than a physical sense and several other things gathered there. Notices were posted at it, since everybody passed through, and legal announcements including banns and parish business were read there. A cross frequently stood nearby, sometimes older than the church itself. Stocks and a whipping post were commonly placed within sight of it. In several regions a stone with a hollow held holy water, or a coin, for those entering. And the boundary itself carried legal weight, since consecrated ground had different rules, and where somebody was buried relative to that line recorded what the community thought of them.

Several traditions became attached to these structures and most are later than the structures themselves. A widespread belief held that the person most recently buried in a churchyard was required to watch over it until the next burial, which produced stories of processions waiting at the gate and of competing funerals racing to avoid the duty, and the gate features in those accounts. Nineteenth century revival building added them to churches that had never had one, as a memorial or as a picturesque feature, which is why a proportion of surviving examples are Victorian. The word itself is the older English word for a body, which survives in a small number of place names.

A roofed gateway sheltered a funeral party and the body while the priest read the first part of the service at the churchyard entrance, and many carry a slab where the bier could rest after a long carry. Bodies were frequently brought on an open bier rather than in a permanent coffin. Many surviving examples are Victorian additions to churches that never had one.