Some notes on the inscriptions
to be found on the graves in Holy Trinity churchyard, Stratford-upon-Avon

The words recorded on the gravestones in Holy Trinity churchyard, disappointingly, contain little to match the gems which tend to be included in collections of epitaphs. All the stock phrases are to be found:

To the loving/sacred memory; In loving/affectionate/beloved remembrance; and Here lie the remains/the body.

Sadly many stones have little space for verses, having to accommodate a long list of the departed.

Quotations from the Bible abound - variations on Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord being particularly popular, along with quotations from the Psalms. Many are said to be not dead but merely sleeping, or not lost but gone before.

The youngest are remembered with the sweetest verses -

This lovely bud so young and fair
Called hence by early doom
Just came to show how sweet a flower
In Paradise would bloom

and the particularly appropriate -

Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not,
for of such is the Kingdom of God

Children are sometimes mentioned - 3 children who died young - but are not named, and presumably they died at birth or soon afterwards. Where a verse is clearly for a child, the age is included in the notes.

It is noticeable that the name of a woman in a solitary grave is usually followed by Wife/widow of, but never Husband of in the opposite case. Relict is the term sometimes used alongside the name of a woman who was a widow at the time of her death.

Many stones give details of the various relationships of those interred, with a surprising number of first and second wives and their shared husband in the same plot.

A few include biographical details:

For 25 years second master of the Grammar School in the town

Who for 38 years was a devoted and faithful Secretary of the Bank of Avon Lodge of Odd Fellows

One of the Brethren of The Earl of Leicester's Hospital, Warwick

Clerk of the Peace of the County of Warwick for 52 years, Town Clerk for the borough of Stratford upon Avon for 40 years

Sometimes the biography seems to relate more to those left behind:

Daughter of Benjamin Faulkner Esq late of Little Chelsea in the County of Middlesex

One of the most impressive monuments in the churchyard records the interest of a young man in the study of botany, 'who attained considerable proficiency, but unfortunately died too young to leave any lasting record of his labours'. Perhaps remarkably in Stratford-upon-Avon, his is the only stone to include a quotation from Shakespeare's Sonnets - a line from number 94.

A few have a more heartfelt and personal flavour:

Affliction sore, long time I bore
Physicians were in vain
Till God did please to give me ease
And free me from my pain

There are tragedies recorded - brothers aged 27 and 24 who drowned under very different circumstances only a year apart; twins who both died within a few months of their birth; and the young man 'late of HM Royal 7th Hussars who died on his passage home from India'.

Poetry is represented by a couple of lines from Thomas Gray's Elegy written in a country churchyard, heavily edited to omit intervening references to mouldering heap and rude forefathers.

A few names merit mention. Were the parents of Orlando John Mills inspired by Shakespeare's character in As you like it? And was George Waterloo Wakefield named for someone who took part in that famous 1815 battle? He died in 1865, aged 27.

If you should happen to come across a party of visitors keen to see the most famous grave of all at a time when the church is closed for a service or event, perhaps direct them to the other grave of William Shakespeare - that is, William Shakespeare Payton, who lies in the south east corner of the churchyard.

The original survey identified two stones dating from the late 1600s. One, a flat ledger stone, has disappeared beneath the grass since being photographed in 2009. In that grave resides John Sharp who died on 19th February 1694. But the elder of the two stones still survives. The inscription reads:

Here lieth the body of Mary the wife of James Southam
who departed this life the 10 day of September ano dom 1682
Also here lieth the body of Mary the daughter of James Southam
who departed this life the 21 day of November 1682

A daughter of Abraham here doth lye
Returned to the dust
Whose life was hid in Christ with God
In whom was all her trust
Who wisely wrought while it was day
And in her spirit did watch and pray
To hear God's word attentive was her ear,
Her humble heart was full of holy fear.

The lettering is scarcely legible today, as indeed is that of many of the inscriptions which the pupils of Stratford Girls' Grammar School saved for posterity.

A further old stone, from 1690, has more recently appeared in the new kerb section assembled adjacent to the church's level access door via the 2015 extension.

Some epitaphs are clearly intended to be general to that grave, but some are more specifically targeted, in which case the names of the grave's other occupants are bracketed in the list.

An illegible section is indicated by .....

Click on this link to go to the list -

Inscriptions of note