John and Alice Robson – a memorial full of meaning

This is the final resting place of John Davison Robson, an engineer whose last home was at 24 Read Street.  John was another person who had moved around the country.  We tend to think of this as a modern trend, but people have always moved to go where the work is and 19^th century Swindon had plenty of that to offer.

John was born in Wellington, County Durham in 1839.  By 1858 he was living in Bristol where he married Alice Storey that year.

Each set of census returns reveal John and Alice living at a different address, with their children born in Bristol, Frome and Trowbridge. 

This memorial is full of symbolism.   The inscription is on a scroll, a symbol of life and time. Both ends rolled up indicate a life that is unfolding like a scroll of uncertain length with the past and future hidden. 

The acanthus leaf has several meanings in funeral iconography.  One of the oldest and most common motifs to appear on headstones, it is associated with the rocky ground where most ancient Greek cemeteries were located.  Its thorny leaves also represent life’s prickly and difficult path.

Passion flowers represent Christ’s passion during Easter week. Across the cemetery there is a memorial to Esther Swinford, who was murdered by her former fiancé. Her headstone has a spray of passion flowers tumbling across it, possibly a misplaced reference to her murder as a crime of passion.

John died on December 4, 1904 and his wife Alice died just eight days later on December 12.

They are buried with their daughter Margaret who died in 1902.  Another daughter Alice Cooper is remembered on this memorial.  She died in 1893 and is interred in Cardiff cemetery.