‘Granite and slate as significant materials for commemorating the dead in west and north Devon’ by Dr Helen Wilson
The geology of any part of the UK largely determined the use of particular types of stone for memorials of the middling classes until improved transport systems enabled other options to become available. In Devon, granite was readily obtained within and around Dartmoor. Although extremely hard to carve, local stonemasons produced both simple and more elaborate memorials, some of which became the standard in parts of west Devon. These were gradually superseded by slate, being much more easily carved and relatively abundant. In north Devon, slate was widely used to produce a regionally significant genre of pairs of matching headstones and footstones with much wording and sometimes elaborate designs. This phenomenon appears to have migrated south, probably with particular stonemasons, to produce an enclave of such work in a small area of west Devon.
Dr Helen Wilson is best known as the biographer of the Pinwill sisters, who established an ecclesiastical woodcarving company in 1890 that survived into the 1950s. Visiting 180-odd churches across Devon and Cornwall to see their work, she noticed particularly attractive and/or unusual memorials in some of the graveyards, which led her to catalogue and photograph the most significant examples.
