This is another of my favourite memorials at Radnor Street Cemetery - it's too difficult to choose just one.
The angel is probably one of the monuments most associated with Victorian and Edwardian graves, but I don't think this is an angel. I think this is a maiden, another popular figure in funereal statuary. Some examples include weeping maidens clinging to pillars crosses and anchors. These maidens represent grief, or if they are looking to heaven, the hope of salvation.
I think this maiden looks very serene. The placing of her foot and the way her garments fall make me think she is passing by, leading the Ashfield family to a better place.
She has suffered some damage and possibly held a garland in her missing right hand.
This is the final resting place of Arthur and Sarah Ashfield.
The youngest child of Charles and Annie Ashfield, Arthur was born in 1881, the year the cemetery opened. Although his birth place is recorded as Stratton by the time he was a month old the family were living at 19 Redcross Street - the original name for Radnor Street. Ten years later at the time of the 1891 census Arthur and his family were living at 71 Radnor Street, possibly the same house following the renaming and renumbering of the street.
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.
Sarah died in 1927 aged 46 and Arthur died 22 years later when he was 68. I think it seems quite fitting that his final resting place should be so close to the house where he grew up.
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The angel is probably one of the monuments most associated with Victorian and Edwardian graves, but I don't think this is an angel. I think this is a maiden, another popular figure in funereal statuary. Some examples include weeping maidens clinging to pillars crosses and anchors. These maidens represent grief, or if they are looking to heaven, the hope of salvation.
I think this maiden looks very serene. The placing of her foot and the way her garments fall make me think she is passing by, leading the Ashfield family to a better place.
She has suffered some damage and possibly held a garland in her missing right hand.
This is the final resting place of Arthur and Sarah Ashfield.
The youngest child of Charles and Annie Ashfield, Arthur was born in 1881, the year the cemetery opened. Although his birth place is recorded as Stratton by the time he was a month old the family were living at 19 Redcross Street - the original name for Radnor Street. Ten years later at the time of the 1891 census Arthur and his family were living at 71 Radnor Street, possibly the same house following the renaming and renumbering of the street.
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.
Sarah died in 1927 aged 46 and Arthur died 22 years later when he was 68. I think it seems quite fitting that his final resting place should be so close to the house where he grew up.
