Hat on headstones

Article

By A. D. Harvey, published 19th July 2009

The grave markers in churchyards and cemeteries are for the most part depressingly unimaginative both in their design and in their inscriptions but one occasionally meets with an attempt at striking an individual note, such as a sculpted depiction of a motor vehicle, or an animal, or the head-gear worn by, or somehow emblematic of, the deceased during his (or more rarely her) lifetime. A nobleman's coronet on a cushion - a motif popularized by the tomb of Vice Admiral Viscount Nelson in St Paul's Cathedral, London, which dates from 1806 - is to be found in two of the oldest of London's larger cemeteries, on the grave of the ninth Duke of St Albans (died 1849) at Highgate and on that of Viscountess D'Alte (died 1862) at Kensal Green. Kensal Green also has a cuirassier's helmet, on the tomb of Captain John Boden Morris, who died in 1844, and a shako on the tomb of John Grenfell Moyles dating from the 1830s or 1840s: the prototype of the helmet motif seems to be the outdoor tomb designed by Johan Tobias Sergel for Field...

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