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Many people who live outside Devon are often surprised if
you tell them it isn't possible to trace the grave of some ancestors.
Our churchyards are very small and the ground is used and re-used over
the centuries with very little attempt to keep records of who is buried
where.
The churchyard at Eggbuckland, now completely surrounded by housing
estates, has been extended twice since Victorian times but even so,
takes only a few minutes to walk around. It is the final resting place not
only of Stuttafords but of Stentifords too and we shall return to their
story in a future Issue. |
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Eggbuckland Parish Church
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The inscribed headstone, maybe with a neat kerb around the
grave with space for other, later inscriptions, was, and still is, an
expensive luxury. Wind and weather not only erode inscriptions in a surprisingly short
time, but they work upon the stone to change it. |
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Here,
amidst a cluster of
Stuttaford graves, slate has been used to form a cover for a grave.
Water has seeped in to split away the top layer of slate which was once inscribed and the crumbled remains of this upper layer have long
since been removed. |
| Remains of a slate memorial |
The 1841 Census showed two Stuttaford brothers and their
families living together as one household. This is the grave of
Archelaus Stuttaford and his wife Mary, the inscription giving a much
truer indication of their ages than did the Census. One of their sons,
Elisha, is also buried in this plot. |
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Family grave of Archelaus and Mary
Stuttaford |
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This stone tells of the sad loss of a child. Listed in the
1841 Census, her life came to an end just three years later. Mary Jane
Stuttaford was commemorated on the grave of her maternal grandmother
Sarah Batten when she died in
October 1844 at the age of 8 years and 8 months.
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| Commemoration of Mary Jane Stuttaford |
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This stone explains the missing wife at the home of
stonemason John Stuttaford on Census day in 1841. We must assume that
Jenney Stuttaford, already ill, was being cared for elsewhere at that
time, for she died in January of the following year, aged only 44,
leaving 4 children motherless. The grave also names Elizabeth
Jane*, a
"missing" child who died before the 1841 Census and would have been born between the Mary and
John listed in 1841 as aged 13 and 9. |
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Grave of Jenney Stuttaford and Elizabeth
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Only a handful of the Stuttafords who lived in
Eggbuckland around the time of the 1841 Census have marked graves but
the others are there, buried somewhere in that small plot of land. They
include
Mary Stuttaford (of Knackersknowle) buried 14 June
1842 aged 72
Mary Stuttaford (of Eggbuckland) buried 25 Jul 1844
aged 64
Betsy Stuttaford (of Eggbuckland) buried 22 Oct
1848 aged 59
William Stuttaford (of Knackersknowle) buried 4 Sep
1849 aged 81 |
| *An interesting inscription. Use the
close-up provided to see how the mason attempted to rectify a spelling
error! |
Back to Issue 13
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