Upon a stone adjacent, to Mary London, who died in 1731, there has
been another portrait of a lady with braided hair, but time has almost
obliterated it. I mention the circumstance to shew that this
special department of obituary masonry, as all others, was prone
to imitations. I may also remark that intelligent inhabitants and
constant frequenters of these two churchyards have informed me that in
all the hundreds of times of passing these stones they never observed
any of their peculiarities. It ought, however, to be said that these
primitive carvings or scratchings are not often conspicuous, and
generally require some seeking. They are always on a small scale of
drawing, in nearly every instance within the diminished curve of
the most antiquated form of headstone (such as is shewn in the
Frontispiece), and as a rule they are overgrown with lichen, which
has to be rubbed off before the lines are visible. It may safely be
averred, on the other hand, that the majority of the old stones
when found of this shape contain or have contained these remarkable
figures, and in some places, particularly in Kent, they literally
swarm. There is a numerous assortment of them at Meopham, a once
remote hamlet, now a station on the London, Chatham, and Dover
Railway. I have copied only one--an early attempt apparently to
produce a cherub resting with outstretched wings upon a cloud, but
there are a good many of the same order to keep it in countenance.

FIG. 18.--AT MEOPHAM.

"To Sarah Edmeades, died 1728, aged 35 years."

In the churchyards of Hawkhurst, Benenden, Bodiam, Cranbrook,
Goudhurst, and all through the Great Weald these incised stones are