February 2022 – Radnor Street Cemetery

The re-imagined story …

I decided I’d join the guided walk around the cemetery on Sunday. I’d seen people on the walks before and to be honest I was surprised just how many turned out each time.

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I lived in Clifton Street and had grown up on the cemetery doorstep, so to speak. As a kid I’d learned to ride my bike there and made snowmen on the rare occasions we had a fall of snow. It was my route to school and a short cut to town and as a teenager I’d walk through it most days to meet my mate Josh. It was as familiar to me as my own back garden. The cemetery held little fear for me, now, after all these years.

It had closed in the 1970s, long before I was born. Years ago, the council used to keep it nice and tidy. The wardens held various events here and I remember coming to a nature day and helping to put up bat boxes. These days it is very overgrown and neglected.

People began arriving at the chapel just before 2pm and as usual there was quite a crowd. The walk was led by a couple of older people. The woman gave us a short, potted history of the cemetery and the man told us a few do’s and don’ts. They were both quite funny actually, and made a good double act.

Then they led us around the cemetery, taking it in turns to talk about half a dozen graves and the people who were buried there. I was surprised at just how interesting it all was. I don’t know what I expected; something ghoulish and creepy, maybe a bit weird.

One of the old ladies started talking to me and took my arm as we were led away from the footpath and across the graves to where the two guides had stopped. I didn’t notice where we were heading.

“Do you think we could take the arm off?” asked Josh as he looked around for something to wield. “Wait up.”

He lived just a few doors from the cemetery gates and was gone just minutes, returning with a sledgehammer.

“Go on. Have a go.”

I swung the heavy hammer but lost my grip and let it fall to the ground.

“Not like that, you idiot.” He began to swivel on the balls of his feet, like the athletes do when they throw the hammer. On the third revolution he let the hammer go. He was surprisingly accurate and the arm of the stone girl flew off.

“What the … Josh.”

We’d hung about in the cemetery loads of times, but we’d never done any damage before.

“Go on – have another go.”

“No.”

“Scared? Chicken?”

“It don’t seem right.”

“Well no one’s gonna complain. They’re all dead.”

“I’m going home.”

“Wait till I tell Nick.”

Nick Carpenter was my own personal tormentor. He singled me out at school, in the playground, between lessons, on the way to school, any place and any time he could find me on my own. He’d beaten me up a couple of times. He frightened me, proper frightened me. I don’t know why Josh thought it was a bit of a joke.

I picked up the sledgehammer. Perhaps if I just swung it around a bit maybe Josh would be satisfied. I raised it to elbow height and just as I swung it, a woman shouted out. I lost my balance and lurched at the memorial. The hammer flew out of my hands and knocked the head off the stone girl.

The woman continued to shout. As we turned round I could see she was keying a number into her mobile phone. No prizes for guessing who she was calling.

We legged it all the way down to the Radnor Street cemetery gate. I could hardly breath and my heart was beating furiously in my chest. We ran down the steep steps by the school and on to William Street, cutting through to Albion Street and the old canal walk, but Josh was laughing; laughing and laughing and laughing.

The story appeared in the Adver the next day and I gained some street cred with Nick and his crew when Josh told them what I had done. My life became easier after that, well at school anyway.

I’d have never done it – if I’d known the story of the girl and her dog – I’d never have done it.

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The facts …

Doreen was tragically killed when the wheel of a timber wagon trailer ran over her body after she fell from her bicycle. The fourteen-year-old sustained multiple injuries and died at the scene of the accident in Stone Lane, Lydiard Millicent on August 23, 1938.

Doreen was the younger of George and Catherine Ind’s two daughters and with her sister Iris was cycling to their Aunt’s house in Upper Stratton when the accident occurred.

Iris gave evidence at the inquest held the day after her sister’s death. She told how the two girls were cycling round a bend in the road on Stone Lane, keeping as near as possible to the near side. Doreen was in the front and Iris behind her.

Iris described how a lorry with a timber wagon trailer approached them on the road. The wheel of the trailer knocked her sister’s wheel causing her to wobble on her bicycle. She tried to pedal, but there was no room. Doreen fell into the road and the back, nearside wheel of the trailer went over her.

“Before the wheel went over her I called twice to the man to stop.”

The funeral took place at St Paul’s Church on August 27 followed by the burial at Radnor Street Cemetery.

Doreen’s parents erected an unusual and poignant memorial to their daughter, depicting a girl holding out a ball to her pet dog. George died in 1947 and his wife Catherine in 1964 and they are buried with Doreen in a large double plot.

In 2009 a local resident walking through the cemetery disturbed a couple of boys attacking with a sledgehammer this unusual memorial of a girl holding out a ball to her dog. As you can see Doreen’s memorial is badly damaged, one of the last serious acts of vandalism to have occurred in the cemetery in recent years.

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Photograph of Doreen’s intact memorial was taken in 2000 and is published courtesy of D & M Ball.

Several years ago I joined an ‘expedition’ to discover the abandoned churchyard at Eysey and of course, as invariably happens when I start researching, I found a link to the parish of Lydiard Tregoze. Not this time to the St John family and Lydiard Park, but the Willis farming family.

The medieval settlements of Eysey and Water Eaton were transferred to the parish of Latton, Cricklade in 1896 when they were by then just a few scattered cottages and farmsteads. The population of Eysey had always been a small one, just 95 adults in 1851 and only 52 in 1901.

The church of St Mary’s, Eysey dated from the 14^th century but was demolished and rebuilt in 1844. The Victorian church that replaced it stood empty for several years before it too was demolished in 1953. The parish registers date from 1571, and end in 1947 so as you can imagine there are a fair few burials in the churchyard. Today there is evidence of the boundary wall and some memorials but the whole area is heavily wooded and overgrown.

Amongst the nettles and fallen trees I found two perfectly preserved pink granite memorials both apparently dating from the 1920s and contained in a large family plot.

The inscription on one of the graves reads: In Loving Memory of Nelly, the dearly beloved wife of Henry John Horton who died at Eysey Manor Dec. 5^th 1924 aged 55 years. On the other side of the memorial the inscription reads: Also In Loving Memory of Henry John Horton her beloved husband who died Sept 1st 1924 aged 64 years. The third inscription reads: In loving memory of Charles James Horton a loving brother & uncle who passed away Jan. 24^th 1947, Aged 79 years.

In the neighbouring grave is a memorial to a mother and son. The inscription reads: In loving memory of Margaret the dearly beloved wife of Ernest Willis who died 24^th July 1958. Aged 95 years.

On the opposite side of the memorial was the inscription that would lead me to Lydiard Tregoze.

In Loving Memory of Ernest Willis dearly beloved younger son of Ernest and Margaret Willis late of Can Court Wilts. July 5^th 1891 – Feby 17^th 1924 He served in the King’s Own (Royal Lancaster) Regt. & Royal Air Force throughout the Great War.

The Horton family had nipped back and forth across the Wiltshire/Gloucestershire county borders, farming at various times at the Manor Farm, Inglesham, Wiltshire and Broadway Farm at Down Ampney in Gloucestershire.

The Willis family had moved from Stanford in Berkshire to the parish of Lydiard Tregoze where John Ambrose Willis married farmer’s daughter Harriet Ellison and raised a large family at Can Court Farm, owned by The Masters, Fellows, Scholars of Pembroke College, Oxford. (For a history of Can Court Farm you might like to visit).

John Ambrose Willis died in 1886 and is buried in the churchyard at St Mary’s, Lydiard Tregoze. His son Ernest took over the tenancy of the farm and in 1889 married Margaret Fanny Horton at Down Ampney parish church where a host of Horton’s are recorded as witnesses at the wedding. That same year Ernest’s sister Ellen Willis married Margaret’s brother Henry John Horton.

On census night in 1891 Ernest and Margaret Willis are recorded at Caln Court with their one year old son Edward Ambrose and Ernest’s brother Henry L. Willis who was visiting with his two children, Sarah and Robert.

Henry John and Ellen Willis are at Costow Farm, a neighbouring property across the parish boundary in Wroughton.

By 1901 the Willis family had moved to Caversham where Ernest worked as a ‘butcher & purveyor’ at 12 Church Street. The family were still living in Caversham at the time of the 1911 census. Ernest and Margaret had been married for 22 years. Still living at home was Edward Ambrose, their eldest son, who worked at a Clerk for the GWR, and their daughter Margaret Louisa. Younger son Ernest is not recorded with the rest of the family.

Ernest senior died the following year. He may be buried in the large family plot in Eysey, perhaps mentioned on the sunken kerbstone that surrounds the two large memorials.

In 1911 Henry John and Ellen were living at Eisey [Eysey] Manor where Ellen (Nelly) died in 1920 and Henry John four years later. Henry John left £43,648 17s 9d with probate granted to his brother Charles James Horton and his three sons Robert Willis Horton, Henry Horton and Charles Horton.

Margaret, meanwhile, moved to Swindon and a house in Westlecott Road. The son with whom she is buried died at the Sanatorium, Linford, Hampshire in 1924. On the eve of the Second World War Margaret was still living at Southwood, Westlecott Road with her bachelor brother Charles J. Horton. Charles died in 1947 and Margaret in 1958 aged 95.