Epitaphs from Oxfordshire

These epitaphs have been collected from churches and churchyards in the towns and villages of Oxfordshire. In verses or prose pieces that are beautiful, touching or eccentric, they tell us what people over the centuries have been moved to say about their dead. The young lady of Dorchester who died a martyr to Excessive Sensibility, the baby of Compton Beauchamp whose life was like his length all but a span, the Cottisford man, a servant of the East India Company, who acquired the entire esteem of the Natives and great Honour to the English factories, the itinerant female rat-catcher who found her last lodging in Chipping Norton churchyard, John the Smith of Brightwell Baldwin, who died in 1371 all these and many more are for a moment brought to life as we read their epitaphs.

The book first appeared in 1980: for this new paperback edition (1990) Patricia Utechin has added twenty-six epitaphs.

Patricia Utechin, daughter of an army officer, lived in India as a child, but has spent most of her adult life in Oxfordshire. Towards the end of the Second World War she was a VAD in military hospitals at Middleton Stoney and Tusmore Park. Thereafter she was a student at Ruskin College, and since then has worked largely in Oxford itself. She has one son, who works as a radio producer, and she lives in Old Headington.

An absolutely wonderful book These epitaphs do what they were carved to do give us pause.

Ronald Blythe

A delightful and wide-ranging collection.

Sunday Times

A splendid little anthology It is a most notable and worthwhile achievement, one which everyone with a love for English and, above all, local life will welcome with acclaim.

Senex, Oxford Times