The re-imagined story …
The path from the Dixon Street cemetery gate to the one at Kent Road was steep and she usually had to pause half way up to catch her breath. It was a nice spot, her resting place, and she quite liked the one chosen by Charlotte Lawes and her neighbour Sarah Nicholas as well – not that she was planning on joining them anytime soon. Although many more journeys up Deacon Street carrying shopping might well finish her off, she thought.
She wondered what their funerals had been like. Did they have the full works, black coach and plumed horses? She had rather fancied a funeral like that herself until her daughter asked – “What, like an East End gangster?” That had rather put her off.
There were not many headstones in this part of the cemetery and some of those that remained were badly weathered. She wondered who they all were – the people buried on this, the steepest part of the cemetery. She sympathised with the funeral director and his men who had to carry the coffins up this steep slope. Two bags of shopping were quite heavy enough.
Right, she took a deep breath; not much further to the Kent Road gate. Goodbye Charlotte and Sarah until next week – looking good, ladies.
The facts …
When the cemetery opened in August 1881 the first burials took place in Section A. Perhaps the methodical Victorians planned it that way. Perhaps the families burying their loved ones had no choice. Perhaps Section A was the first area ready to receive burials in the hastily constructed cemetery.
August 6 – Frederick Gore, 54, a house painter plot A140; Albert Edward Wentworth, 1 month old, an infant plot A139 and three days later, Mary Grave Hill, 8 years old, a child A138. So many burials in August 1881 – Edwin Hemmings, undertaker; Benjamin Smith, auctioneers’ clerk; Thomas Basson, labourer and so many babies and children.
Section D and E boast many memorials. Some large and impressive – guardian angels, maidens weeping – some more modest, kerbstones around the plot bearing a name. In Section A there are few surviving headstones. There were probably never many anyway as this is where the early railwaymen and their families were buried. Difficult enough to pay for a funeral, let alone a gravestone. Difficult enough to live.
Charlotte Lawes lies alone in plot A539. She died on April 2, 1883 leaving a personal estate valued at £123 5s 6d to her sister Elizabeth Palmer. Perhaps Elizabeth paid for the headstone out of her inheritance.
Charlotte was born in Bath and baptised at St. James’ Church on February 8, 1818. Her mother’s name was Jane and her father John was a tailor. Charlotte had at least one sister, the aforementioned Elizabeth, and the family lived in Bathwick. By 1851 sister Elizabeth was married but Charlotte was still single and working as a barmaid in Bath.
On March 9, 1857 Charlotte married William Arundel Lawes in St Mark’s Church, Lyncombe. William was an engine fitter living in Swindon and considerably younger than Charlotte. The couple had no surviving children.
By 1861 the couple were living at 32 Westcott Place. Ten years later they were living in the railway village at 41 Taunton Street where William died the following year. He was buried in the churchyard at St. Mark’s, the church in the Railway Village, where Charlotte saw to it that he had a fine headstone, too.
Charlotte remained living at 41 Taunton Street where at the time of the 1881 census she is recorded as a widow aged 64 sharing her home with a boarder, John Newman 31, a draughtsman in the Works.
Like New Swindon itself, Section A was a busy place with people arriving all the time. John Crane, a 63 years old labourer from 20 Queen Street was buried in the plot next to Charlotte on March 13, 1883, shortly before she moved in. This grave plot appears to be a public one – no sold sign written in the burial registers.
It would be almost twenty years before anyone else joined Charlotte and John. Then on February 25, 1901 Sarah Nicholas was laid to rest next to Charlotte and another gravestone was erected. Sarah had died aged 81 at her home in Cheltenham Street. She left effects valued at £138 18s 1d to Edmund Jones, a builder, enough to erect this fine gravestone.
And so, the two women have lain in rest side by side for more than a century. Looking good, ladies.
Radnor Street Cemetery 