Hilarie: Struck by an idea, or was it a headstone?

Nov 21 2009 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

WHEN I DIE and they lay me to rest I won’t be in a position to care whether I have a headstone or epitaph.

“Just put my ashes in a hole in the garden next to Edmund the Oranda,’’ I once said to Secondborn, owner of the aforementioned speciality goldfish, now deceased. She thinks I’m a bit mad.

But, quite clearly, there are some inhabitants of this planet who think it is extremely important to leave a marker for posterity of their existence.

I was struck by this over the weekend when we decided to give York Minster a thorough going-over.

We left Firstborn in his student house doing studenty things because he’s of the ‘no churches, no museums’ persuasion. Secondborn came along because she likes history and didn’t want to be left in the student house.

The resplendently Gothic Minster is absolutely stuffed with the remains of people who commissioned elaborate effigies and tombs for themselves and their loved ones.

At least, we assume they were loved ones but no-one tells the absolute truth on gravestones. They’re all ‘dearly beloved’ and ‘much mourned’, ‘pious’ and ‘humble’. No-one says ‘Here lies John, who was a pain in the neck’.

Although I don’t have a religious bone in my body, I love visiting cathedrals and have a ‘collection’ that began with Durham (often visited during my childhood in the North East) and includes Rheims, Chartres, Notre Dame, the fabulous Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and Westminster Abbey.

My fascination for these edifices was enhanced by reading Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, which appeared in the BBC’s top 100 books a few years ago. I have since read the follow up, World Without End, and enjoyed it immensely.

These novels describe the times in which the great cathedrals of Europe were erected and follow the trials and tribulations of an architect and his family. The books are works of fiction, but it’s impossible to read them without admiring the skills and determination of our ancestors. They believed they were building a small piece of heaven on earth and it’s difficult today to walk around one of the medieval cathedrals without feelings of awe and wonder – not about heaven, but about how they actually managed this feat. And why they went to all the trouble.

In fact, an exploration of the crypt museum in York reveals that for the first 300 years Christians believed that God is omnipresent and therefore there was no need to build holy places for worship.

It was the Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena, an interfering pair, who began the whole church-building programme that continues today. They were heavily influenced by Greek and Roman temples and, no doubt, thought their new religion ought to go one better.