I've always liked the small but beautifully proportioned church at St Andrew's-by-the-Green, so when I was passing today I stopped for a look at the graves. The stone here is not properly a gravestone but a lair-marker, a peculiarity of eighteenth and early nineteenth- century urban graves when the right to a particular spot was purchased in advance. (Of course lairs still are purchased, but perhaps the Georgians did not trust the written records as well as we do.) Markers with a  name, date and profession and other identifiers were common, especially in high-status, crowded church-yards. It seems odd from a modern view point to place your name on the spot of your future burial, and perhaps see it there every Sunday, and even for people who were aware of their closeness to death their whole lives, it must have given pause for thought.