Category: UK

This gravestone is located at All Saints’ Church in Bawdeswell and it commemorates the life of Robert Gardinear. Although I’m sure that there are a few examples of that surname still around, it seems a more unusual way of spelling the word. Talking about transcription issues, prizes to anyone who can read the age on this gravestone. I initially thought that it said “aged 52 years” but all the transcriptions read “aged 32 years”. Although, this would fit, as the nearest birth that I can find is Robert Gardener who was baptised at this church in Bawdeswell in 1765 and then buried here on 21 April 1796 (having died one week earlier). If the birth is the right Robert, then he was the son of Henry and Elizabeth Gardener (or however they were spelling that).

Back to the spelling of Gardinear, I’m going to say that’s a mistake dating back to the eighteenth century. There is no record of anyone else of that surname in Norfolk and the spelling of names was quite fluid in the eighteenth century.

This is the ledger stone of Robert Leeds (1711-1761) and his wife Alice Leeds (1700-1770), who were buried in All Saints’ Church in Bawdeswell. I can’t be certain, but I suspect the baptism at Foxley (near to Dereham) on 1 October 1711 (and birth on 18 July 1711) is the same Robert Leeds. He himself was the son of Robert Leeds (not another one…..?) and Mary Leeds.

He married Alice at St. Mary Church in Sparham on 26 January 1730 and that’s a little bit of an age gap for the time, with Robert being 19 and Alice being 30. They were the parents of Robert Leeds (1736-1807), William Leeds (1740-1798) and John Leeds (1743-1763).

John Leeds (1743-1763) was the son of Robert Leeds and Alice Leeds, as well as being the brother of William Leeds and Robert Leeds. I can’t though establish why John died so young.

As I don’t get out much and need a distraction, I’ve been trying to establish how wealthy this family might have been. And I’ve discovered that the presence of these ledger stones isn’t necessarily a sign of high wealth, it was often because they were cheaper than monuments and so it was something that would have been accessible to the middle classes. The individuals would have been buried under these ledger stones, but as the church has been rebuilt twice due to a couple of unfortunate incidents, that may or may not be true here. If it wasn’t for church burials needing to move outside, primarily for health reasons, more churches might well have been completely paved with these ledger stones.

Once again, I can’t offer very much here due to the paucity of the records that are available. William Leeds (1740-1798) is buried at All Saints’ Church in Bawdeswell and he was the younger brother of Robert Leeds (1736-1807) and the older brother of John Leeds (1743-1763). William was baptised at the church in Billingford in Sparham (the neighbouring village to Bawdeswell, so he didn’t get very far) on 7 June 1740, the son of Robert Leeds and Alice Leeds and he was buried on 26 February 1798.

I don’t have much to add to this one, I just liked that at least a few things survived inside the church. This tombstone inside All Saints’ Church in Bawdeswell has survived the church being rebuilt twice and commemorates the life of Robert Leeds. Robert was born in 1736, the elder son of Robert Leeds and Alice Leeds. The older brother of William Leeds (1740-1798) and John Leeds (1743-1763), Robert was buried on 29 January 1807 and the burial record lists him as a yeoman, which is likely a small-scale farmer who owned and cultivated their own land. He must have been doing well enough to be allowed to be buried inside the church, although there are other family members buried near him and perhaps they were the wealthy ones. Referring to a different Robert Leeds, White’s Directory noted in 1845 that “a great part of the soil in the village belongs to Robert Leeds”, so there was some prosperity floating about somewhere in the family. Unfortunately, as I can’t find any mention of him in the newspapers of the time, Robert has rather fallen through the cracks that are historical records.

I was interested in this stained glass window at All Saints’ Church as that’s a rather impressive period to be the churchwarden, from 1912 to 1968. Major Quintin Edward Gurney was born on 20 February 1883 and he was the son of Richard Hanbury Joseph Gurney, aged 28 at the time of Quintin’s birth, and Sarah Evelyn (Buxton) Gurney, then aged 29. His siblings included Christopher Richard Gurney, Rachel (Gurney) Bruce, Richenda Evelyn Gurney, and Gladys Catherine (Gurney) Wynn.

In 1911, Quintin Edward Gurney married Emily Ada Pleasance Ruggles-Brise in Braintree, Essex. His wife, born in 1880, lived until 1972 and the Ruggles-Brise family was also well-established, particularly in Essex, further solidifying Gurney’s social standing through this union. Together, Quintin and Emily had a substantial family, documented as having at least four sons and two daughters. Their known children were Pleasance Evelyn (1913–1996), Richard Quintin (1914–1980), Ruth Cecilia (1917–2017), Edward Ralph (1919–1937), John Romer (1920–1932) and Archibald James (1932–2004). He held the rank of Major in the British Army, specifically serving with the Norfolk Yeomanry. The Norfolk Yeomanry was a unit often associated with the county’s gentry and farming communities, so this wasn’t really a working class lad done good and indeed he was from the wealthy Gurney family whose bank was taken over by Barclays, with Quintin himself being a director of the TSB.

Here he is when he was at Harrow School in the late nineteenth century. As can be noted from the stained glass window, following his death in 1968, his son Richard Quintin took over the role of churchwarden until his own death in 1980.