FEW pastimes are more poignant than wandering around a country churchyard and reading the old gravestones. Whether blooming with moss and lichen or neatly scrubbed and tended, they conjure up a sense of past lives —and the passing of time—more solidly than any history book. The weight and presence of stone, which is durable enough to weather the centuries, has long been used to commemorate and memorialise, whether in the public sphere, to celebrate great achievements and seismic events, or in the private one, to create a last tribute to a loved one or to mark a meaningful occasion.
The practice of carving in stone is as old as humanity
