02/11/2026
Remembering all those laid to rest at St Sampson’s on All Souls.
We are but passing through during our time with St Sampsons Church. It has stood for centuries, witness to important moments in history and milestones in people’s lives. It is a place of worship, community, solace, celebration, commemoration, sadness and joy.
We can marvel at the history of this wonderful building and remember those who, like us, walked in the church yard and sat in the pews, who lived their lives and have gone before, leaving their mark amongst the gravestones. Walking in the churchyard recently one stone caught my attention; ‘reader stop a while and think’. I have since spent some time stopping and thinking, looking at the gravestones from the 1800s and making a note of any legible verse and scripture inscribed on the stones. Some stones lean into each other, some stand straight. Many words are lost to time, hidden in the lichen and moss or under ivy that is winding around some stones, laying its claim, one leaf at a time.
Below are some words from some of those that the lichen has spared and the themes that emerge. Today, All Souls Day, seems an appropriate day to have them in our thoughts:
Peace and sleep; death as rest
‘He giveth his beloved sleep’, ‘Resting where no shadows shall fall’, ‘Her end was peace’, ‘Father in thy gracious keeping leave me now thy servant sleeping’.
Reunion and heaven:
‘Not lost but gone before’, ‘Forever with the Lord’, ‘I hope we soon shall meet again, reader now seek and find the narrow road, and walk therein to glory and to God, till you arrive on that eternal shore, where time, nor death, shall ever part us more’, ‘Blessed are the dead that lie with the Lord’, ‘Gone with those she loved’.
Flowers and nature:
Buds with no time to become flowers, sunbeams for Jesus, the setting sun, shadows fleeing at daybreak, ‘Thou shalt come to thy grave, in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season’.
However, sadly many did not reach a full age.
Children and death at a young age, the most touching group:
‘This lovely bud so young and fair called hence by early doom, just came to show how sweet a flower, in paradise could bloom’, ‘Her sun went down while it was still day’, ‘She is not gone from memory, she is not gone from love, but she is gone from earth, with Jesus up above’, ‘It is well with the child’.
Family grief:
‘Dear wife, see how my life is past, my love to you so long did last, then now for me no sorrow take, but love my children for my sake’, ‘Gone but not forgotten by his sorrowing wife and children’, ‘Farewell my wife and child so dear, brother and sister too, I die in hope to be with Christ and there to wait for you’.
Acceptance of God’s will:
‘Thy will be done’, ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away’, ‘In love he lived, in peace he died, his life was asked but God denied’, a plea for a life… refused.
On some, a warning to the living, a message to those who stop to read; ‘Prepare for death for you must die, all you that pass this way, pray stop a while and think, that I am in eternity and you are on the brink’, ‘Reader repent, thy moments fly, prepare for death for you must die’.
I would like to end this with some words from a more recent gravestone of a friend that I feel encompasses all. 150-200 years have passed since some were laid to rest but, if we are lucky in life, we feel the same:
‘Life is not forever, love is’
