A Fair Gate To Oblivion by JPG Taylor

10:20am Saturday 12th April 2008

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A life summed up in letters on stone or marble can be illumining, telling or, accidentally, amusing, as STEPHEN LEWIS discovers.

THERE are many moving tributes you might choose to inscribe as an epitaph to commemorate the life of a loved one.

The following, found in the hill-top churchyard of Holme Upon Spalding Moor, might not be one of them.

"Jane, wife of George Alcock of Howden, who departed this life 7th August 1810, aged 60 years," it says. "She was a virtuous but not a loving wife."

Sam Taylor cannot help a rueful smile on reciting this - possibly his favourite epitaph in a 200-page collection.

"That's always struck me as a strange thing to put on a tombstone," he says. "It's a sad, sad summary of what must have been a cold marriage. There is so much remorse and bitterness caught in that one short line."

Mr Taylor loves epitaphs. The retired Queen Margaret's School teacher has spent years popping into the graveyard of just about every church he sees to jot down those that caught his eye.

The result is A Fair Gate To Oblivion: A Celebration Of The English Epitaph, which is available now from the author himself or selected local bookshops.

The book does exactly what it says on the cover - celebrates the full range of the English epitaph, from the bombastic to the humorous, the quirky to the downright odd.

What Mr Taylor loves about epitaphs is the way the language reveals the attitudes of the times.

Thus a memorial to the jockey Thomas Jackson in Nunnington, who died in 1766, reads like a lecture to the poor on the merits of hard work: "His (Jackson's) faithful and Meritorious Services gained him this monument, which affords a useful lesson to the humbler Part of Mankind; who may learn from hence that Men of Industry and Honesty, may rise to Glory, from the lowest stations." Maggie Thatcher would have approved.

It is the often unintentionally humorous epitaphs that make this book a joy, however.

There is, somewhere in the Vale of York, a memorial to a parish priest who had "preached without enthusiasm for upwards of 40 years", Mr Taylor notes - adding this was intended as a compliment, because too much enthusiasm was associated with the "ranting of extreme non-conformist sects".

Then there are those whose humour derives from the odd juxtaposition of phrases, such as the following: "Erected to the memory of John Macfarlane, Drowned in the water of Leith, By a few affectionate friends."

Or, even funnier: "Here lies Captain Ernest Bloomfield, Accidentally shot by his orderly, March 2nd 1789. Well done, thou good and faithful servant'."

A Fair Gate To Oblivion by JPG Taylor (Sam Taylor) is available from the Barbican Bookshop or Janette Ray books in York, or direct from the author at 22 Holmes Drive, Riccall, York YO19 6RT, priced £18 (plus £2 p&p if you live outside the York area if ordered by post).