St Michael's
Stoney Stanton
Notices
Voices of the Past...........
Standing with your back to the church tower and looking to your left hand side you will see an early 19th century headstone dedicated to the memory of Richard and Anne Atkins. It asks that fourteen children who died be infancy also be remembered. Memorials such as this remind us that even those long dead still have their stories to tell us, and the lives of these ordinary people yield as much important to our understanding of the past as those of better-known ancestors.
Richard Atkins was born in 1756, and married an Anne Dakin, daughter of William and Mary Dakin in December 1780. From then on, until February 1800, they produced no fewer that sixteen children of whom only two sons survived infancy, John, born in 1783 and Richard, born in 1796. Richard Atkins senior is mentioned in Nichol’s History of Leicestershire as being among forty-three proprietors of land. A Return to Parliament the following year gave the population of the village as 446 - 222 males and 224 females, in all 97 families living in 97 houses. Forty-four of these families were involved in agriculture, with trade providing a living for the remaining forty. The Rector at this time was Rev’d John Boucher Nichols, whose grave may be found under the east Window, adjacent to that of Rev’d John Bold.
Rev’d John Bold really deserves a chapter on his own, a mere paragraph can hardly do him justice. This saintly man arrived in the village in 1702, at the age of twenty-three, as curate. He took lodgings in the village and eked out a meagre living as a schoolmaster in nearby Hinckley. He was to remain in the village for the next forty-nine years dying in October 1751, much mourned by his flock. During his time the children of the village were taught to read and write, and became numerate. Such was his influence that a ploughboy of the time described in later life leaving his team ‘whenever the church bell rang at three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon’ to go to Mr.Bold to be catechised, returning to his plough afterwards. His influence was great among the villagers of his day, and he left a small amount of money to found a Charity for the good of the poor, added to by later benefactors. In summertime, a wild sweet pea clambers over his grave, a fitting natural tribute to this humble yet influential Christian priest.
Two of the oldest graves in the churchyard are those of Elizabeth and John Garritt who died in 1721 and 1729 respectively. Their grave can be found between the war memorial and the gate into Nock Verges, while a similar slate headstone, of William Bown, who died aged twenty-one years in 1721 is to be found near to the south-east corner of the church.
Several different kinds of materials are used. Slate is quite common, there are some large brick-based tombs, marble of different colours and a very few of the unyielding local stone, granite. Two of these may be found next to the path leading to Nock Verges, on the right-hand side, with simple inscriptions giving only initials, age and date of death, 1834. Parish records yield the information that these two belong to Richard and Thomas Bray, sons of William and Letitia Bray. Local masons have left their signature on a number of stones, the earliest being ‘T.Coulson of Barwell’, dated 1743.
War Grave Commission headstones and one private headstone commemorate five young men of the village who died in the First World War.
Inside the church, memorials have their own stories to tell.
A wall-mounted marble plaque commemorates Anthony Mainwaring, grandson of Rev’d A.E.D. Disney, who was Rector of St.Michael’s 1885 -1923. He was killed on board H.M.S.Mosquito at Dunkirk in 1940.
And inside the ringing-room is a sad little memorial to Mary Benskyn, three month-old daughter of John and Anne Benskyn dated 4th October 1704.
An interesting postscript concerns the son of William and Anne Orton, who lie in the south-west corner of the churchyard, in the shade of an ancient tree. John Orton, by then an ‘Innholder of Kidderminster’ in Worcestershire left £25 in 1790 , the interest on which was to pay for the upkeep of the gravestones of his father, William, his uncle John, and after her death (in 1800), of that of his mother Anne. Should a new stone be required it was to be erected but should cost no more than £3. The interest of half of the remainder was to be shared equally between four poor widows of the parish, who did not already receive parish pay. The interest of the remainder was also to be divided amongst ‘four poor boys of Stoney Stanton between the ages of nine and seventeen years who can, and shall, ring four peals on the bells of St.Michael’s Church. This is to happen every year of the fifth day of January, being Old Christmas Day.’
John Orton himself was buried in Kidderminster, and according to the publication ‘Leicester and Rutland Notes and Queries’ (volume 11) he had an extraordinary epitaph, which is a curiosity in itself. The vault of his tomb was built, ten years before he died, with the following inscription:
‘To the memory of
JOHN ORTON
a man from Leicestershire
and when he is dead, he must lie HERE’