ABSTRACT
The choice for the inclusion of the burial of suicides and unbaptised children in consecrated ground was left to the discretion of the vicar. During the seventeenth century, the north side of the churchyard was associated with the burial of unbaptised children, felons and excommunicants who had, by faculty, been granted permission to be buried within the sanctified ground. While the Earls Colne parish burial registers did make a distinction between baptised and unbaptised individuals, there is no evidence to show whether the latter were buried exclusively in the north of the churchyard. The east and south sections of the churchyard were far more preferable while the north sections remained feared. The earlier examination of St Andrew's Church revealed the distribution and appropriation of the sacral space as a means of indicating social, as well as moral, status and stratifications through the location of burials within the church and churchyard.
