A lychgate is a gate with a little roof over it at the way into a churchyard — the grass and graves around a church. It is a British church-yard word, not a city-street word. In the old days the coffin rested under that roof for a short time before the burial, so the name has a quiet, serious job. You still see lychgates on English village churches, often in old wood, sometimes with benches at the sides. Though actually, people also write lych-gate with a hyphen, and a few write lichgate; they mean the same roofed gateway.