Hello Nature Lovers!
This video presents you with a show of the wonderful Lych gate of St Mary's Parish Church in Harrow on the Hill (UK)
Steeped in decades of history and no doubt numerous hidden stories, this wonderful structure was built 1861 in memory of John William Cunningham, Vicar of Harrow 1801-1861 and is of national architectural interest with Historic England (historicengland.org.uk/) having appointed it a Grade II listing in the 1980s.
It has a timber frame with fretted bargeboards to gable ends, on a brick dwarf wall and chamfered pad stone with a tiled roof. It would shelter the coffin standing on a bier while the introductory part of the burial service was read by the vicar.
I love my walks through it on a regular basis and always find intrigue and respect for the painstaking craftmanship needed to produce such a divine shelter for what was probably (in olden days) where bodies of the dead were placed upon a bier sheltered (perhaps overnight) before the burial ceremony conducted by the vicar. These days its more of a place for people and the coffin to gather and await the vicar to welcome then guide them to the church for the funeral ceremony and prayers.
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