Lytch Gate #2 - Whorlton Traditional Cache
Team Wangawonga: No longer there. Archived.
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(micro)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
There is parking on the east side of the green in Whorlton. St Marys' Church and Lytch Gate are located to the south east corner of the green and the cache, in a 35mm film canister, lurks close by.
The Lytch Gate series of caches are each, unsurprisingly, located in close proximity to a church or cemetery Lytch Gate. Please note that none of the caches are fixed to the Lytch Gates. You don’t need to climb on the structures, hunt around gravestones or disturb the fabric of the churchyard or cemetery in any way. Most of the caches are simply located a short distance away within view of the Lytch Gate.
The Lytch, or Lych (both good scrabble words if you have no vowels) Gate is a small covered gated entrance to a church yard or cemetery. The word comes from the saxon for corpse and so they are literally “corpse gates”, originally erected to provide a covered resting place for a corpse or bier, often while part of the burial service took place. Think on, the next time you see a bride and groom posing for wedding day photographs in front of the lytch gate!
Lytch Gate enclosures commonly have masonry lower walls, with timber posts above supporting a timber roof structure with tiled or slated roof finishes, but others are all timber or all stone affairs, whilst some have thatched roof coverings. Many have elaborately carved or decorated eaves boards and you will often find weather vanes and crosses adorning the roofs. The gates themselves are usually of timber, often oak and, because they are covered, many original gates survive in remarkably good condition.
A few specifics:
The original church was thought to date back to the Norman period but was demolished in 1853 (in the days before English Heritage, you could do such things!) to make way for the admittedly attractive Decorated Gothic building that we now see. Just to the west of the Lytch Gate is the parish hall, originally built as an independent chapel in 1840.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Onfr bs jnyy, haqre jurer lbh tb bire...
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures