Arthur and Sarah and the Ashfield angel

The re-imagined story …

The Ashfield angel was my mum’s favourite memorial in Radnor Street Cemetery. Weird, I know, but my mum was like that.

She wanted a ‘Victorian’ funeral with a hearse drawn by black horses with plumes and mutes (whatever they are) in attendance, until she realised how much it would all cost. I thought it sounded like an East End gangster’s funeral myself.

My mum loved Radnor Street Cemetery but she always knew it could never be her final resting place. The cemetery had long since closed to new burials and we didn’t have an existing family plot.

Mind you she spent enough time up there when she was alive and as I mentioned the Ashfield angel was one of her favourites.

“She looks like she has taken them by the hand and led them away to heaven,” she used to say. I know, vaguely creepy.

Mum wasn’t even that religious and she certainly didn’t believe in a life after death and heaven. Personally, I don’t think the statue is even an angel, but there we are. It’s funny the effect Radnor Street Cemetery can have on a person. Take me for example, wandering around the graves and stopping at the Ashfield angel.

The facts …

This is the final resting place of Arthur and Sarah Ashfield.

Arthur worked as a carpenter and railway horse box builder in the GWR Works. In 1904 he married Sarah Gray, the daughter of a steam engine maker and fitter. At the time of the 1911 census Arthur and Sarah lived at 30 Alfred Street with their five year old son Charles and Arthur’s widowed mother Annie.

The youngest child of Charles and Annie Ashfield, Arthur was born in 1881, the year that Radnor Street Cemetery opened. Although his birth place is stated as Stratton, by the time he was a month old the family were living at 19 Redcross Street, the original name for Radnor Street.

In 1891 Arthur and his family were living at 71 Radnor Street in quite possibly the same house, following the renaming and renumbering of the street.

Sarah died in 1927 aged 46 and Arthur 22 years later when he was 68.