Permanent Easter Sepulchres: a Victorian re-creation?

During the last twenty years there has been a renewed interest in Easter sepulchres. It was Pamela Sheingorns ground- breaking work which brought increased attention to them. 1 More recently, Eamon Duffy, in Stripping of the Altars, wrote of Easter sepulchres in this way: ... the most imaginatively compelling of the Good Friday ceremonies, though associated with the cross, came after the solemn liturgy had ended. This was the custom of the ‘burial’ of Christ in the Easter sepulchre, an observance which left a deep mark not only in the minds of medieval English men and women but in the very structure of many parish churches. 2 I shall be arguing in this essay that Duffy is overstating his case and that the claim that the structure of very many parishes provides evidence for the ubiquity of permanent Easter sepulchres is not well founded, either. In order to explain why I have reached such radical and unexpected conclusions (unexpected and, indeed, unwelcome to myself), I shall need to outline the story of Easter sepulchres in England from their beginning.