International Rabbit 10/11/2012

By Godric Godricson

The Isle of Wight is situated a few miles off the coast of Hampshire. The island is the largest island lying off the coast of England and is a sort of England in microcosm. There are hills and woodland on the island as well as extensive coastline and beach. The residents of the island often refer to themselves as ‘caulkheads’ with the people on the “Big Island” being known as ‘overners’. The ‘Caulkheads’ of the Isle of Wight are friendly and accustomed to visitors from the mainland. In fact, much of the income for the island is based on tourism and comes from the visitors who happily buy travel, excursions and accommodation as well as tourist related services. The island has grown comfortable with tourism and with tourists although the economy of the island could also use some modern investment for light industry and intensive infrastructure projects.

When  I visited the island recently it was for a holiday of sorts and to visit some places that have significance to me and my family. To this end I visited the parish Church and graveyard in Chale and this is where genealogy meets monuments.  Like other ancient villages on the island, Chale is small and has little to offer the casual tourist. Most services are centered around modern towns  on the island such as Ventnor, Ryde, Shanklin and Sandown. In comparison, Chale is clustered around the parish Church built in the 11^th Century. The Church is a stone time capsule containing everything that you need to know about the Isle of Wight and the big island over the water. The geographical location of Chale tells you something about the relationship of the village with the Church and the location of the village itself on the coast tells us something. The location of Chale tells us something about the manner in which people earned their daily bread in  the fishing industry before the advent of tourism. Everything in the landscape tells  us part of the story

The parish of Saint Andrew has some wonderful monuments both  inside the Church and outside.  The ancient Church is a place for indoor burials that betray something of the history of faith and death in this community. Indoor burials illustrate the link between burial and a cult of the ancestor. The Church combines a number of themes and facets in one place and through time. The size, shape and styles of the memorials tell us something about fashion and traditions on the island as well as leaving something behind that tells us about the local history of the village. We have to look closely and then the stones speak to the modern visitor about the past.

Outside, the graveyard of Chale is a ‘Republic of Death’, where the rich and the poor are placed side by side in  surprising social cohesion. We have evidence of  the rich and the poor being placed side by side and their remains mingle and interweave together over time. Émigré Hungarian Counts have rested in the cemetery beside paupers and  bodies fished from the sea who died the victim of shipwrecks and unseasonable storms. The graveyard is the eternal resting place for the famous and the mundane as it was always meant to be.

My patrilinear line are represented in this small village situated between the moorland and the sea. Although my own lineal ancestors have no existing memorial they are unique to Chale and the Isle of Wight and they changed their own world through physical endeavour. My ancestors were both poor and rich and they are buried throughout the small graveyard under different surnames.  I can only guess at where the ancestors are buried from the position of current monuments. My own family burials tell me something about the power of ancestry or blood in the soil and the efforts people will make to visit sites of significance. Chale holds some of my great-great Grandparents and I’m sure that the residents of the neighbourhood will share my DNA. Chale is, for me, a cultic site in that I visit the place every few years or so in the same way that a salmon swims up the river. I also think about my ancestors at this site and so the village represents that portion of us that acknowledges and ‘worships’ the ancestors. Monuments mark out special places and although my lineal ancestors no-longer have markers I can guess where they are within a few feet. Chale is a special place.

When I got back to a warm and sunny Valetta in Malta, I recognised that I am linked to both the living and the dead and with the past and the present. I am also a cousin to living people around the world and part of the great human family. There is a continuing power in physical monuments, genealogy and the landscape if only we can read the signs and symbols.

Godric Godricson maintains a blog on burials and funerals and is based in Valetta, Malta and the United Kingdom. You can find his blog at http://godsacre.blogspot.co.uk/