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 Several tombstones of much greater antiquity, in the form of plain and floreated Crosses, were found built into the walls of the Church, and are now collected together and inserted in the Churchyard wall, near the north-east corner. One or two of them have a pair of shears on them, to indicate the housewife, woman, or female child; and one has a sword, to show the man or boy. The old Saxon Cross, of which two or three pieces have been recovered, has been already spoken of as carrying us back for certainly not less than eight hundred years, and not improbably to a period still more remote.

Most of the names on the Headstones of the Churchyard are those of families which have been in the parish for some generations: the families of Willcock, Moxon, Swifts of Waterslack (1744), Fish of Waterslack, Johnson, Ibbotson, English. Some of them speak to us of families which have altogether disappeared: Rich of Dawwalls (1722); Streetes (1729); Smith of Dean Hill (1706 to 61); Ellis of Hillhouse, 1707; Rhoades of Cawthorne Hall, 1737; Newton, Kettleroyd, 1716; Mr. Daniel Wilson of Barnby Furnace, and his widow, 1812. On some of them we find names which do not at all belong to our neighbourhood or county: that of Puddephatt taking us back to the time when Cawthorne had its "gauger" for Mr. West's large malt works, where "Malt-kiln Row" now is; while in those of Rix, Fishbourne, Potts, Atkinson, and others, we may see the connection between Cannon Hall and Norfolk and Northumberland. The headstone to "Mary Fishburne, of Holkham," erected as a mark of personal esteem by Mrs. Clarke of Noblethorpe, preserves the memory of one who was a parochial "character." In his Fifty Years of my Life, Lord Albemarle speaks of "Polly Fishbourne" as one of the gamekeepers at Holkham (Lord Leicester's) and Keeper of the Church Lodge. He adds, "She must be about my own age. She had large black eyes, red cheeks, and white teeth; her hair was cropped like a man's, and she wore a man's hat. The rest of her attire was feminine. She was irreproachable in conduct, and indeed somewhat of a prude. Polly was the terror of poachers, with whom she had frequent encounters, and would give and take hard knocks; but generally she succeeded in capturing her opponents and making them answer for their misdeeds at Petty Sessions. A Norfolk game-preserver once offered Polly a shilling a-piece for a hundred pheasant