Some Essex Coffin-Slabs, by Miller Christy

Medieval Coffin-Slabs at Stapleford Tawney (1900)

Extract from Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, New Series, Volume 7 (1900), pages 371–372 and 392–393.

The Study of Medieval Coffin-Slabs

British archaeologists have hitherto devoted little systematic study to the memorials generally spoken of as "Coffin-slabs", common though these memorials are in our churches over the greater part of Britain.

In the following article, I propose to give the result of information collected during the last year or two, whenever I have had occasion to visit an Essex church which happened to contain a Coffin-slab.

Slabs of the kind with which I am concerned are numerous in Essex.

The Stone Coffins at Stapleford Tawney

Of Coffin-slabs still accompanied by the stone coffins to which they originally belonged, we have, in Essex, examples at Great Bardfield, Stapleford Tawney, and probably other places.

I have not been able to obtain an illustration of that at the first-named place; but, of that at Stapleford Tawney, a good figure (Fig. 1) is here given, together with a representation (Fig. 2) of another stone coffin, a good deal mutilated and without its slab, which exists at the same place.

Many of our Essex Coffin-slabs are in an advanced stage of dilapidation and decay, due to wear and tear or ill-usage during the long period since they were laid down.

Source

Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, New Series, Volume 7 (1900), pp. 371–372 and 392–393.

Illustration note: The original article refers to two illustrations: Fig. 1, a stone coffin with its slab at Stapleford Tawney, and Fig. 2, another stone coffin at the same church, damaged and without its slab. These illustrations were not included in the supplied extract.