John Oliver was the miller of Highdown Hill.

When not grinding corn he seems to have busied himself with thoughts upon the necessary end of all things, to such an extent that his meditations on the subject gradually became a mania.
His coffin was made while he was still a young man, and it remained under his bed until its time was ripe, fitted--to bring it to a point of preparedness unusual even with the Chinese, those masters of anticipatory obsequies--with wheels, which the miller, I doubt not, regularly oiled.

John Oliver did not stop there.

Having his coffin comfortably at hand, he proceeded to erect his tomb.

This was built in 1766, with tedious verses upon it from the miller's pen; while in an alcove near the tomb was a mechanical arrangement of death's-heads which might keep the miller's thoughts from straying, when, as with Dr.
Johnson's philosopher, cheerfulness would creep in.
The miller lived in the company of his coffin, his tomb, and his _mementi mori_, until 1793, when at the age of eighty-four his hopes were realised.