-BURIALS IN THE CHURCH -

exerpted from An Account of St. Austell, by Cannon Hammond, 1897
(J. Mosman, OPC)

It will be observed that the charge was only 3s.4d. (to be buried within the church walls) - say, one pound of our money - no wonder that so many were interred within its walls: there were few years in which there were not from five to twenty-five of these (in 1731 there were thirty "buryalls"; in 1676, out of thirteen of these, three were non-parishoners), and the names are generally recorded, but only in connexion with the fees paid, which at St. Austell were not exhorbitant.

They did not remain at this attenuated figure, however; by 1712 the charge had been doubled. In 1772 it was decided that, great injury having been done to the Church by digging graves therein, no one should be buried within the walls unless an undertaking had been given to pay to the Churchwardens the sum of four guineas. In 1793, "the faculty for the new Churchyard having passed the Great Seal", it was resolved that such a new Churchyard be now used, and that no graves be made even in the old Churchyard except at a fee of £4 4s., the sum charged for interments in the Church. In 1811, it was decided that no one should be buried in the Church except on payment of 50 pounds, which heroic charge effectually put an end to these intramural interments. It should here be added that those buried within the building have no more been allowed to rest in peace than those who were laid to sleep under the sod. The latter were disturbed in their long repose in 1839, when Church Street was widened; in 1844, when it was resolved that the excavated soil be removed to "the Higher Burial Grounds" and the sexton was directed to collect all bones and to see to their re-interment; in 1886, when the Memorial Vestry was erected, and finally in 1887, when the mound which had risen on the North side of the Church was levelled; the precedent of 1844 was then followed, the soil being carefully transported to the High Cross ground. But the dead within the Church were also taken up, or what remained of them, in considerable numbers during the restoration.