Welsh Bicknor - St Margarets Church (General)

by timdanzoo, Tuesday, August 09, 2011, 14:22 (4932 days ago) @ xray2000

I was most interested to see the list of names on the graves. I had read in a book "Personalities of the Forest of Dean" by Rev H G Nicholls, 1863,that some of my Kemble ancestors were buried there. Both "Altar Tombs", the inscriptions he was able to read back then read thus:-

"In hope of a joyful resurrection, there lieth interrred the body of Ann, wife of George Kemble, Gent, who departed this life y*---"

On another altar-tomb, inscribed withe sacred monogram I H S, the following epitaph occurs:-

"In Memory of
Elizabeth the wife
of John Kemble, gent
who departed this life
August the 4th
Anno 1712
Aged 80 years."

This is grave number 32 and in 2009 I was just able to make out some of the inscription. I did not spot Mary Williams in there too from 1749! I wonder who she could be and why she is there? I see Anne's name on the list of burial records died 17??
It doesn't sound from the inscriptions that the Kemble husbands were buried there too.

I had originally been searching for a Roger Kemble who lived at Lydbrook who died in 1757. He owned the house in Lower Lydbrook - called now "The Old Sarah Siddons House" (Sarah Siddons was born a Kemble - granddaughter of the Roger I was hunting for in the churchyard.
He left it to his eldest son John who then sold it, so Sarah Siddons couldn't have spent much time there as she was born in 1755!) Roger Kemble had inherited the house from his niece Mary Allen who is buried together with her father Robert Allen in grave number 2 . I have downloaded her PCC Will made the day before she died May 1st 1743 in which she asked to be buried as near as possible to her late mother, though Mary Allen senior's name is not listed on your site.

I don't know if these details are of any interest but if you have any further information i would be very glad to have it!

Sara Daniel