Dovercourt Cemetery

The name is common Brittonic with "Dover" coming from "dwfr", which is "water" in modern Welsh; the origin of "court" is unknown but possibly meant "land cut off by". Dovercourt was recorded as 'Douorcortae' in the year 1000. Dovercourt appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, when it was a manor. The Domesday Book records that a Saxon lord called Wulwin or Ulwin had been lord of the manor in 1066; by 1086 the estate was in possession of Aubrey de Vere and remained part of the barony of his descendants, the Earls of Oxford, until the 16th century. It formed part of the dowry of Juliana de Vere when she married Hugh Bigod in the mid-12th century, and the sub-tenancy passed to the Bigod earls of…

In the 1400s All Saints Church in Main Road drew thousands of pilgrims after the wooden cross (or rood) on its rood screen became a shrine. "It acquired a miraculous reputation and was said to have spoken on some occasions" said the historian John Ashdown-Hill. The 1600 version of the play Grim, the Collier of Croydon says: "And now the rood of Dovercourt did speak, Confirming his opinions to true." The accounts of John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, show that he donated money to the shrine "including clothing in 1482 used to dress the image of Christ on the rood", according to Ashdown-Hill. The 1981 edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable says that John Foxe reported that the crowd…