Cockle Shells & Curious Plants

We have an impression of the Victorians as diligent and dutiful Churchgoers. In fact, in 1850 over half the entire population of the country did attend a Sunday Church service of some sort. Though around the middle of the century, some voices were being raised to point out that on the whole, Anglican Church attendance was beginning to show signs of decline. Among the many factors that could be reasoned for this reluctance to attend, one was the general condition of church buildings. At the outset of the 1800s, many (especially rural) parish churches were showing clear signs of neglect. Early modern spending on maintenance, had not quite matched the levels of generosity the medieval benefactors had lavished on their local houses of worship. And descriptions of sagging and leaking roofs, along with dangerous cracks in the masonry, sometimes so bad, that the winter wind was felt through gusting them, are common to read about.

A drawing of St Mary's, Cowbit, near Spalding, showing the near-derelict state of the Church before restoration in the mid 19th Century. This was a common condition of many rural and fen churches around Lincolnshire at this time.

The government had begun to remedy this. In 1818 it had voted £1 million to be spent on new churches, which was followed by another £500,000 in 1824, producing a surge in church building. The enthusiasm for building or restoring churches continued in Victoria’s reign, galvanised by the ‘High Church’ Oxford Movement: between 1851 and 1875, 2,438 churches were built or rebuilt. 

Many Lincolnshire churches, both large and small, attracted the attentions of the renovators. Old roofing was repaired, plaster and paint stripped from walls. mouldering wormy (and sometimes very ancient) woodwork was pulled out and replaced with sharp panels and pews of dark varnished oak. 

St Mary the Virgin, Frampton in 2024.

The medieval church of Saint Mary the Virgin stands in the small fen parish of Frampton, three miles south of Boston. Originally a tiny settlement, on the banks of an ancient but long-ago silted up creek that wound into the wide marshes of the wash. It was here, the village church with its magnificent limestone tower, dating from the 12th century was comprehensively restored in 1890 by prolific English ecclesiastical architect Charles Hodgson Fowler. And it was during these restoration works that would be revealed a couple of mysteries, that despite thorough research seem never to have been solved.

One of the largest jobs to be undertaken in the renovations, was the consolidation and levelling of the internal floors, that appear to have raised in places at some point in the past. And it was upon lifting the slabs, and beginning to remove the earth below, that a puzzling pair of burials was revealed.

In a letter dated 1889 to Lincolnshire Notes & Queries titled Stone Coffins filled with Cockle Shells. The then current resident of he parochial Frampton Hall, Captain C.T.J. Moore writes.

253. Stone Coffins filled with Cockle Shells. —

In excavating the soil which has been brought in to heighten the floor of the transitional portion of Frampton Church, several stone coffins were discovered, which must originally have had their lids level with the floor. The lids are all gone, but the bones, remain in the coffins, each has been filled with cockle and other shells and sand. It is evident from their being filled up to the top, and shells not being found elsewhere, that this was done by design and not by accident. The effect appears to have been to preserve the bones, which are perfectly fresh, although they must have been buried six hundred years before.

C. T. J. Moore. Frampton Hall  [1]

The closeness of Frampton and St Mary's to the tidal marshes and beyond those, the sea. Would mean sourcing the shells was no issue, however the purpose of this practice of filling the graves with them remains a mystery. I haven't so far been able to find a similar burial practice either in regionally or across the UK. The similarity of the cockle to the scallop might indicate some symbolism connected to pilgrimage. Or again, this may be a single insight into a local superstitious practice subsequently forgotten. if anyone reading this has any ideas, please leave a comment or contact me.

Cockle Shells.

However it's a second letter from Captain Moore some time later, to the same journal. That reveals an even odder phenomenon seen as a by-product of the recent Church works.

92. Church Excavation and Curious Plants. — 

When Frampton Church was restored, the floor was lowered about 8 inches, to its original level, and that material which had been used for heightening it, probably when the pews came in about 200 years before, was removed and spread in the churchyard. It looked more like sand than the soil of the surrounding district.

The following spring there appeared in the churchyard several curious-looking plants which grew about 4 feet high and had a long and wide leaf, prickly and of very dark green, and a blue flower.

Specimens were intended to be sent to Miss Ormerod [3] and others for identification, but, unfortunately, some ignorant person started the idea of the plant being highly poisonous, or productive of “ plague ” ; every plant was ruthlessly extirpated, burnt, or destroyed, before a leaf could be sent, and none appeared afterwards.

Neither myself or any gardener who saw it recognised this plant.

As, doubtless, it sprung from seed dormant within the Church for probably at least 200 years (and to have been in the soil infers it must have been common at the time the soil was deposited), 1 am curious to know whether anyone else connected with Church excavation has noticed similar plants springing up from the excavated soil.

C. T. J. Moore. Frampton Hall [2]

Seed dormancy is a natural adaptation that prevents seeds from germinating when conditions are not then ideal for survival. Dormant seeds are alive but do not germinate even when given the right conditions for plant growth, such as water, oxygen, and temperature, holding off till a future point when conditions suitable for growing present themselves. The common poppy being the plant most people will be familiar with, whose seeds can lay buried for considerable lengths of time, until vigorous tilling and disturbance sees the seeds germinating, often in swathes, creating that wash of red, sometimes seen ploughed fields left fallow.

But Frampton is a rural parish, the vast majority of the congregation of St Mary at the time would have worked the land in some capacity and been comfortably familiar with herbs and plants of both field and fen. Herb-lore and plant folklore in Lincolnshire was expansive, Lincolnshire Clergyman and early ecologist The Reverend Adrian Woodruffe-Peacock, filled nearly 30 pages in his attempt to catalogue Lincolnshire Folk-names for plants. [4] So this unfamiliarity with the ones sprouting in the Churchyard is striking! Had the recent renovation work, as the Captain suggested, quite literally unearthed a time capsule of some now extinct example of fenland flora?

The sudden ensuing local panic, that this flowering plant may bring death or disaster to the parish, robbed the Captain (and us) of an opportunity to solve this intriguing mystery. If anyone can decipher the plant from the description above, I'd love to update this entry with a solution.

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Sources and further info:

[1] From:  Lincolnshire Notes & Queries, Vol I, 1889, p. 250

[2] From:  Lincolnshire Notes & Queries, Vol V, 1898, p. 158

[3] Eleanor Anne Ormerod (11 May 1828 – 19 July 1901) was a pioneer English entomologist.

[4] Adrian Woodruffe-Peacock, Lincolnshire folk-names for plants. Publisher:W.K. Morton, 1894.

You can read a digitised copy of this work here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=yale.39002040783350&seq=3