This gravestone was erected by the children of Sarah Ann Shulze who died on January 2, 1964 at the Victoria Hospital, Swindon.
This beautiful heart shaped headstone displays a dove, symbolic of peace and I can’t help but wonder if perhaps Sarah had a life lacking in peace.
Sarah Schulze was born in Avon near Chippenham in 1884, the daughter of George Poulton and his wife Emma. In 1903 she married George William Schulze, the son of Albert Gustav Schulze, a military tailor and cap maker born in Germany.
Albert was living in Aldershot at the time of his marriage in 1876, but the family obviously moved around a fair bit. George was born in 1879 in Norwich while his sister Clara was born in Ireland. In 1881 the family were living in Scotland and by 1891 they were back in Aldershot.
By 1911 George, now married to Sarah Ann, was living at 16 Gordon Gardens here in Swindon where he worked as a Traffic arranger in the Rolling Mills in the GWR Works. The couple had seven children, including little Freda Saturnia who died at the age of 5 on December 23 1914 at the family home, 30 Reading Street.
George died in 1955, a patient at Roundway Hospital, the psychiatric hospital near Devizes. Sarah survived her husband by almost ten years.
I can’t help but wonder how this family with such an obvious German sounding name had coped with living through a period of two world wars.
Radnor Street Cemetery 