Charles Partridge introduced the attached chronological list of monumental inscriptions in East Anglian Miscellany no 9,440 (1935, pp. 27 & 28) with the words "This churchyard has never been vandalised". He is known to have deplored the removal or repositioning of memorials elsewhere in Suffolk, which had destroyed or diminished the genealogical value of these "stone parish registers".
Some of us would be almost equally horrified by a suggestion he made in a contribution to East Anglian Miscellany (no 4,263) in 1914 about the Richer family of Old Newton, referring to some additional gravestones:
East of the path leading from the principal gate to the south porch there is a foot-stone for Philip Richer, 16(?8)9. Near it are two stones now indecipherable, but a vigorous scrubbing with brush and water might perhaps bring the inscriptions to light. Between the above stone and the church there are two head-stones for:
(1) Philip Richer, died 19 Jan. 1799, aged 64;
(2) Philip Richer, died 21 Jan., 1813, aged 50.
Unfortunately, the registers of Old Newton do not begin until 1705.
In fact, burials back to 1654 have been transcribed by the Suffolk Family History Society, and 17th-century entries noted by Charles Partridge himself in the 1935 list include Philip Riches (sic) in 1691. It may be merely coincidental that a Phillip Richier was buried at Combs, on the other side of Stowmarket, in 1689.
In later life, if not sooner, Mr Partridge advocated a safer way to read faint inscriptions, as related by the anonymous friend who wrote his obituary in The Times (10 Jan. 1956 p. 11):
Perhaps one of his chief contributions to the recording of knowledge was the survey he made of all the tombstones in all the churchyards of Suffolk. I believe that there were only two churches he had not visited, and that he had failed to decipher only about 1 per cent. of the inscriptions. Sometimes, he said, he had found after rain, in a particular slanting light, that he could at last make out a line which had hitherto baffled him.
The following surnames are indexed on the second page of the Old Newton compilation:
Alderton, Chenery, Cooper, Cross, Downing, Hall, Harvey, Hawkens, Howard, Lott, Manby, Mayhew, Nunn, Pierson, Pizzey, Pollard, Pyman, Raffe, Richer, Robinson, Roper, Smith, Turner, Ward, Whitehead
Post-1800 inscriptions will no doubt be available at the Suffolk Record Office when it reopens.
