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Archiver > CHESHIRE > 1997-11 > 0879917100


From: David Bryant <>
Subject: Re: CHESHIRE-D Digest V97 #42
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 18:25:00 +1300


I checked in "The Rise and Progress of Wallasey" thinking there may have been a reference to these headstones - but no luck.
Have you consulted the Parish Registers for 1776 for deaths of SG and WG or the Churchwardens' accounts (transcribed
respectively by Woods, Hopps and Brown and by Hance and Morton, THSLC, xxxv, 87)?
Regards
David Bryant

> Subject: Re: A Gravestone Mystery
> Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 22:13:27 -0000
> From: "William Geoffrey Heath" <>
> To: <>
>
> The second letter on each stone appears to be an inverted 'G' but not a
> mirror image. The first letter on the first stone is a mirror-image 'S',
> which may or may not be inverted, since the inversion is the same as the
> original, being skew-symmetric. The first letter on the second stone is an
> 'M', which may or may not be a mirror-image, since the letter is
> symmetrical about its vertical axis. Could it be an inverted 'W'?
>
> Suppose the stonemason was asked to carve two stones for "S G" and "W G",
> but (for some unknown reason) was asked to invert the letters. He may have
> thought that a mirror-image 'S' was how an inverted 'S' would look
> (although, of course, they look the same). For the inverted 'W' he carved
> an 'M'.
>
> But if this is the case, why didn't he just turn the stone round and carve
> them right way up? Whatever the answer to that question, I think the
> letters are intended to be inverted but not mirrored.
>
> Geoff Heath
>

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