Wooden Graveboard In The Churchyard Of St Margaret'S

Wooden graveboard in the churchyard of St Margaret's. Dated 1859. The graveboard is a long, horizontal board, likely made of oak, morticed into square-section posts with moulded, waisted, pyramidal finials. The finials are in poor condition, particularly the one on the right. The front of the board has an incised inscription reading 'IN MEMORY OF ANN ROGERS/ Died Sep 13 1859 Aged/ 61 years'. The reverse bears the epitaph 'BE YE ALWAYS READY', and the quality of the lettering is high. The graveboard is located approximately 15 metres north of the Church of St Margaret’s.

It was erected in memory of Anne Rogers, who died on 10 October 1859, aged 61. The memorial was recorded in 1920 by the antiquarian Leland L Duncan, who documented inscriptions in over 80 Kent churchyards. The graveboard would have been positioned longitudinally along the grave. Such wooden graveboards were once common in English churchyards, especially in southern counties where good monumental stone was scarce, including Surrey, Kent, and the Chilterns area. However, due to the vulnerability of timber to decay, surviving examples, particularly from the 18th and 19th centuries, are now rare. By the late 1850s, a wooden grave marker probably indicated either relative poverty or a preference for tradition, as the Industrial Revolution and the railways had made stone headstones more affordable.

The group value of this graveboard lies in its rarity as a Victorian wooden graveboard, the quality of its carved inscription, and its historical significance as a type of funeral monument which became largely obsolete due to the increased availability of affordable monumental stone.