Tags
I have always, some may think weirdly, had an interest in graveyards. Not for any spooky reasons connected with Michael Jackson’s Thriller, or zombie films – which I don’t like anyway – but for their sense of history. Apart from the information obtainable on the stones, it is the closest you will ever get to departed loved ones. And I include in that notable figures from history whom I admire. So when I went to Rome, my first priority was not the Colusseum, but John Keats’ grave. But that’s another story……
A couple of years ago I did my first graveyard crawl – like a pub crawl but with less booze and more tombstones – around the churches of Suffolk. At that time I was concentrating mainly on my mother’s side of the family since Dad’s side had been researched in far more depth previously. So it was the Suffolk villages of Metfield, Chediston, Wissett and Withersdale which were on my agenda.
I started however in Mendham, where I knew several family graves are: it was easy, of course, to locate my parents, my grandparents Rose and William Warnes, and a few other members of the Betts family, including Daniel and Matilda (the latter’s stone is now leaning at an angle and likely to keel over at some point, sadly). I also knew, and was able to find, ‘Uncle Jimmy’s’ grave (James Betts who died in 1956 following a motor cycle accident) – all these graves were places I visited as a child and then adult accompanied by older family members.
Also easy to find were the graves of two of Daniel and Matilda’s daughters, Matilda Andrews (Aunt Tillie) and Charlotte Bond (Aunt Lottie) along with their respective husbands.
Then came the first puzzle. I had been informed that Eliza, my great-grandmother, was buried at Mendham, but unlike all the other graves, I had never been brought to visit her and lay flowers. So I set about looking for a stone with her last married name, Eliza Francis, on it.
And I didn’t have to look far – there was her stone, just one plot away from Uncle Jimmy, just behind my grandparents, firmly among her family. Next to her is her husband Thomas Francis, and there is a memorial stone set in her grave to her daughter Evelyn Mary Dove.
So here, all within a few yards, were my parents, grandparents, great grandmother and great great grandparents! And every time I have visited since, they have all been given a share of the flowers brought.
After a quick visit to my grandparents’ old house in Mendham – No 8, South View – I drove on to the nearby village of Withersdale Street, passing my father’s childhood home, the Red House, en route.
My destination here was St Mary Magdalene Church – coincidentally dedicated to the same saint as the church in Bermondsey where so many of my relatives were baptised, married and buried.
Again, I knew my Dad’s brother Charles Frederick lay in this churchyard, but it took a bit more looking to find my Warnes great grandparents, William and Bessie, whose stone is now getting difficult to read: when I found it however, I discovered a few other Pretty graves alongside – Bessie’s maiden name was Pretty – and I documented and photographed these before moving on to Metfield.
There I discovered more Prettys, and some Betts, including Robert who died in 1825 aged 72, whose first wife was buried with him and his second wife was named on the stone as being ‘interred on the right’. I have not yet been able to identify how this family is related to me – that’s a puzzle for the future….
On to Chediston and then Wissett, where more Prettys are buried,. The most interesting Chediston graves are those of Louisa and Jacob Pretty, who lie side by side: Jacob’s stone is also dedicated to the memory of Isaac George, their son, who was, it says, accidentally killed in Maltby Main Colliery in 1930 aged 46. What was he doing up North?
Another puzzle for another day….
As with so much family research, many questions were answered and many more raised. That’s one of the delights of the hobby.