Lychgate

It is cognate with the modern German Leiche, Dutch lijk and lichaam, West Frisian lyk and Swedish lik, all meaning "corpse".

Typically, they were gable or hipped roofed, often with benches where mourners could sit, or with a lych-stone, coffin-stool or trestle, upon which a coffin could be rested.

In Texas and the South of the US, lychgates are simpler in construction, usually consisting of a steel or wooden span with a sign showing the name of the burial space.

[4] Most were built from around the mid-15th century although some date from earlier, including the 13th-century lychgate of St George's churchyard in Beckenham, South London, claimed to be the oldest in England.

In the Middle Ages, before mortuaries, and at a time when most people died at home, the dead were placed on a bier and taken to the lychgate where they remained, often attended against bodysnatchers, until the funeral service, which may have been a day or two later.

"[11] An English commentator, writing in 1899, noted that the lych-gate, "or corpse-gate, with its pent-house roof, is specially provided for the shelter of a funeral while awaiting the priest, but it is only in a few cases that it is exclusively used for that purpose; it is frequently, perhaps, where it exists, commonly, the principal gateway of the churchyard.

"[12] In some regions of Cornwall and Devon, such gates were called "trim-trams" – the spot where a funeral train (or tram) was brought into the proper order (or trimmed) to be ready for the officiating clergyman.