Rounded things off with a tour of the Rosary Cemetery. I have written about this so many times in the past and read a number of books and documents about it.
I have a personal interest in the cemetery as many of my ancestors are buried there and as I mentioned a few days ago my 3x great uncle Britiffe Dew is there, He was the first ever superintendent of the cemetery and a contemporary of the founder Thomas Drummond.
I have tried to research where his unusual first name comes from but to date am none the wiser, although it's a name that features heavily in my Dew ancestors, often being used as a second name.
Britiffe Edmund Dew was born in Salthouse on the North Norfolk coast (another very special place for me) in 1793. He was the son of James and Rebecca Dew (nee Bond) and was the brother of my 2x great grandfather William Dew.
He married Mary Ann McKellar in St Andrew’s Church, Holborn, London, in 1813. Mary Anne originally came from Glassary in Argyll, Scotland and was born on 17th January, 1796. She died on 26th October, 1864, in Thorpe.
They had 11 children some of which are also fascinating ancestors (as I will explain later).
Britiffe Dew became the first superintendent of the Rosary Cemetery - a post he held from 1819 until his death in 1876. Previous to being the cemetery superintendent he was a schoolmaster, silk weaver and grocer.
The whole Dew family which may have numbered up to 13 lived in the lodge at the cemetery which must have been a real squeeze as you will see from the photograph of myself in front of it.
His tasks at the cemetery would have been everything from arranging burials, keeping records, gardening and even digging graves - in other words a jack of all trades.
In January, 1860, he was declared insolvent which seems a strange state of affairs but I am told that the cemetery itself went bankrupt on at least two occasions. His son Henry James Dew took over from his father as superintendent of the Rosary after Britiffe's death.
One of his children - Rebecca - ended up in the workhouse with her husband Thomas Mayes and their six children. Which is extraordinary when you take into account that another of his sons - Frederick Duncan Dew - was a servant in a number of Norfolk homes before moving to London. That's where his story becomes fascinating as he became a London publican, a benefactor and a Freeman of the City. When he died he left a fortune (equivalent to several millions in today's money) to his housekeeper despite the fact that one of his sisters and their children were penniless. Obviously there is more to this story than meets the eye and much more research is needed. Frederick Duncan Dew returned home when he died and is buried close to his father in the Rosary.
I hope you enjoy some of the photographs of the cemetery which really is a special place with some Norfolk luminaries buried there. You will see one of the memorials is to Anna Sewell, but that isn't the writer of Black Beauty but a different Anna. There are architects, artists, writers, Lord Mayors of Norwich, members of the Colman Mustard Family and many more as well buried there.
Every time I walk round I find a new story. Today's involved a husband and wife who met a similar fate many years apart. You will see the headstone to George and Lily Garrod in my photos. George Jeremiah Garrod was killed by enemy aircraft at Felixstowe in July 1917. Lily Agnes died as a result of enemy action in April 1942, almost 25 years later and in a different war. We must assume that this enemy action was one of the so called Baedecker Raids on Norwich which took place between April and June 1942.
Norwich was one of five English cities chosen for bombing by the Germans because of their historic importance and the fact they featured in the Baedecker travel books. The other cities singled out were Exeter, Bath, York and Canterbury.
Apparently the Garrod headstone is carefully worded as Lily remarried after the death of her first husband. This is probably the reason why her surname has been omitted.
I will bring you more stories about those buried in the Rosary in future blogs.