OS1/14/5/52

Continued entries/extra info

[Page] 52

"A portion of the Abbey garden immediately east of the chancel had been appropriated as the Grave-yard of the
Convent. There the dead was interred in consecrated ground, in stone coffins which from a number examined
in 1851 had been formed of two ends, with sides and a cover; there was no stone bottom but a Stratum
of Sand on which the body had been laid and the Space afterwards filled up with fine mould; the foot
of the Coffin was invariably towards the East. This part of the Abbey ground is yet called the Kevan Kirkyard,
which is an abominable corruption of Convent Churchyard and paralleled only by the attempt of the mo-
dern official Goth to Saxonize Aberbrothock into Aberbrothwick. When the ground on the north
side of the church began to be used as a burying-ground cannot be ascertained, the oldest stone to be
met with there is dated 1589. The Catholics never buried their dead on the north side of their churches: its appropriation
to that purpose must have been after the Reformation"
Abbey of Aberbrothock, &c, 1852