The Radnor Street cemetery volunteers are a versatile group. Not only do they care for the CWGC graves and identify others with a military connection, but they mow and hoe, weed and clean and also locate lost graves. Bex recently helped Liz, a visitor to Swindon, to find her great grandparents grave and in doing so revealed yet another fascinating Swindon family history.
Liz helpfully had the cemetery paperwork concerning two family graves – plots D937 and D938. These proved to be the graves of two brothers, William John and James Henry Foyle with their respective wives, Margaret Ann and Mary Jane. The brothers were two of four sons born to Isaac and Rebecca Foyle. All four sons were born and raised in Swindon and all four followed their father Isaac, a labourer in the GWR iron works, into the railway factory; William as a boiler smith, James a brass finisher, George a railway clerk and Alfred an electrical fitter. William would eventually move to Wolverhampton, but following his death he was buried next to his brother James.
James’s grave with its elegant headstone was easy to locate. See below two before and after photographs taken by Bex.
Liz was also keen to find other family graves, including those of Esther and Kate Finney. Research revealed that the two sisters were the daughters of William and Emma Finney.
Esther and Kate both served as Red Cross nurses during WWI. Esther was a volunteer at the Red Cross Hospital In Taunton in 1917 while Kate stayed closer to home and served as a Ward Helper at the Red Cross Hospital in Stratton in 1918.
In 1939 Esther, Kate and their brother William lived with their widowed mother at 11 Clifton Street. Esther is described as a Shopkeeper (Gown and Millinery) and Liz was able to provide a photograph of the shopfront.
Esther died in 1959 and Kate in 1970 and they are buried together in grave plot E8298 with their brother William who died in 1957.
The connection between the Foyle and Finney family is that Esther and Kate’s brother John Marshall Finney, married James and Mary Jane Foyle’s daughter Elsie Gladys Foyle.
Hopefully Liz will keep in touch with Bex and even more family stories will emerge.
Radnor Street Cemetery 