A patch of land adjoining a church, often used as agraveyard.
1907 January,Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, inThe Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen,→OCLC:
They said nothing further, but tramped on in the growing darkness, past farm steadings, into the little village, through the silentchurchyard where generations of the Pallisers lay, and up the beech avenue that led to Northrop Hall.
1980,AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page44:
Ayot St Lawrence's most famous inhabitant, George Bernard Shaw, moved into the New Rectory in 1906 because, it is said, of a gravestone epitaph in thechurchyard. This recorded the death of a woman who lived to be 70 with the comment 'Her time was short'. Shaw thought that a place that considered a life of 70 years short was the right place for him.
