E X T E N S I O N HAWORTH CHURCHYARD Perhaps as Emily wrote the closing lines of her novel she had in mind the churchyard beside the Parsonage in which she lived. Like many English churchyards, the graves lie scattered1 among the green grass and trees, quietly at rest in the peaceful atmosphere of a garden. A stone now marks the gate through which the Bront s used to walk to church, and through which they were carried too early to their final resting place. Nowadays it seems almost romantic, but in the 1840 s the churchyard was one of the causes of the large number of deaths in the little village and of the unusually high number of people buried there. This was due to two reasons. One was the custom of covering the graves with flat stones which slowed down the decomposition of the bodies (could this be why Heathcliff finds Cathy s face still intact years after her death?), so that as more graves were needed, they were dug up and thrown into a common pit2. Unfortunately, the village water supply passed through the churchyard, which led in turn to more deaths; tragic ignorance which led to unnecessary loss of lives. The Bront s are buried in the family vault3 inside the church, but one can easily imagine Lockwood standing over the graves in the churchyard, wishing those beneath the ground eternal peace. 1. scattered: spread. 2. pit: a large deep hole in the ground. 3. vault: a room under a church where people are buried. 101