page_title: Ledger stone
section_title: Entitlement to use
hierarchical_section_title: Ledger stone / Use in England / Entitlement to use
caption_attribution_description: English: Black marble ledger slab in Holy Trinity Church, Tattershall, Lincolnshire. William Wright, Surgeon and Apothecary who died in 1735 aged 44 is buried next to his wife Mary. Both slabs have a skull and crossbones motif, possibly appropriate for a surgeon.
context_page_description: A ledger stone or ledgerstone is an inscribed stone slab usually laid into the floor of a church to commemorate or mark the place of the burial of an important deceased person. The term "ledger stone" derives from the German word legen, meaning to lie. Ledger stones may also be found as slabs forming the tops of tomb chest monuments.
context_section_description: It is not clear what criteria were needed to qualify a deceased person to be buried within a church (rather than in the churchyard outside) or to merit a ledger stone. Examples of ledger stones range from the aristocracy, country gentry, the professions, clergy to merchants and tradesmen. At Tattershall in Lincolnshire there is a slab to the local apothecary and surgeon with an inscription under a skull and crossbones. A late 17th-century slab in Brecon Cathedral records a local butcher. It is noticeable that the inscriptions for many clergy and some gentry were inscribed in Latin, but this largely disappears by about 1740.
  A ledger stone in St Nectan's Church, Hartland, Devon, to Thomas Docton (d.1618) of Docton, bore originally a "quaint" epitaph which is oft-quoted, for example in Epitaphs for Country Churchyards by Augustus John Cuthbert Hare. It begins Rejoice not over me, oh my enemie, but was originally surrounded by a brass ledger line inscribed with the following verse:
  Here l lie outside the chancel door;
  
  Here I lie because I'm poor:
  
  The further in, the more they pay;
  
  But here I lie as warm as they.
caption: Ledger slab in Holy Trinity, Tattershall, Lincolnshire, to an apothecary and surgeon
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