One of the most important people in Swindon’s history not buried in Radnor Street Cemetery is Joseph Armstrong.
Joseph Armstrong’s funeral was described as a spectacle seldom seen, with ‘the whole town and neighbourhood showing every possible honour to the memory of the deceased.’
Image published courtesy of Local Studies, Swindon Central Library.
The railway works closed for the day and an estimated 6,000 people lined the streets between Armstrong’s home at Newburn House, through Rodbourne and to the church of St. Mark’s.
During the first week of June 1877 Joseph Armstrong had left Swindon for a short holiday. He was suffering from heart disease and exhaustion exacerbated by his heavy workload. He died on June 5 at Matlock Bath.
Joseph Armstrong was born in 1816 in Bewcastle, Cumberland. Throughout his railway career he worked for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the Hull and Selby Railway, the London and Brighton Railway and the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway before arriving in Swindon in 1864. He was appointed the second only Chief Superintendent of the GWR Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon Works succeeding Daniel Gooch where he was responsible for the construction of all new engines, carriages and wagons and in charge of 12,900 employees.
A non-conformist, Joseph Armstrong was a staunch supporter of the need for a burial ground where non conformists could bury their loved ones according to their own beliefs and without the strictures of the established church. Sadly, at the time of his death just such a cemetery was still the subject of rancorous debate. It would be another four years before Radnor Street Cemetery was opened.
The strength of feeling at the time of Armstrong’s death is conveyed in the following extract from the editorial written by William Morris, published in the Swindon Advertiser.
Today an elaborate Grade II listed monument stands on the Armstrong family grave in St. Mark’s churchyard.
And this brings us to the lesson of Mr Armstrong’s death, and of the work and duty it has thrown upon us. We believe it was his desire to secure for others that liberty of religious thought which he enjoyed himself. And that this end might be secured he had taken an active interest in obtaining for the large and populous parish of Swindon that burial accommodation which the religious liberty of the subject demands should be provided for every parish, and the proposition to provide which for Swindon has been met and opposed by so many wretched subterfuges. We may treat with proper contempt the wretched work of bedaubing tombs and harrowing widowed hearts; but, as we have said we cannot afford to submit to such obstructions to our progress, to such evidences or the existence among us of a dogmatic priestly rule, altogether out of accord with the spirit of the age in which we live. This, then, is a work Mr Armstrong has left us to do – to provide a cemetery without priestly rule – a place of interment where we may bury our dead without the danger of having our feelings outraged by some impertinent and officious interloper who, by bell and book, would consign us to eternal punishment if we dared dispute his authority.
The Swindon Advertiser Saturday, June 16th, 1877
Extract from the editorial – written by William Morris
and a letter to which he refers in this lengthy editorial.
To the Editor of the Swindon Advertiser
Sir – Will you kindly allow me a space in your paper to lay before the people of Swindon the facts of a case upon which I think they should give judgment.
On Wednesday in Whitsun-week, (as you announced in your paper), a man named Benjamin Browning, of New Swindon, died suddenly, and his remains were interred at St. Mark’s on the following Sunday. His widow caused a tombstone to be erected to his memory, and underneath the usual inscription were placed the Latin initials R.I.P. Requiescat in pace or “May he rest in peace.” The Rev. George Campbell, vicar of St. Mark’s, seeming to consider these initials illegitimate, had them effaced with a covering of cement, and now in their stead there is a patch of a different shade to the stone.
I respectfully ask you, Sir, and the people of Swindon, if this is fair or Christian in a burial ground which, if it is not a public one, is the only one in the town for all denominations. And I ask also if the Rev. George Campbell has acted legally in defacing the property of another person?
There is something so simple, so sweet, and so impressive in the sentence for which those initials stand, that I think none could dislike it but those (if there be such a class of People) who do not wish the departed to rest in peace.
I am, Sir, yours respectfully,
James O’Connell,
23, Taunton-street, New Swindon, June 12th.
Radnor Street Cemetery 