The Diary of Nathaniel Bryceson (Part 7)

[Ruskie]

Burials in the Parish of Battersea, Surrey
1846
Elizabeth Lawrence
abode: Found drowned
Buried: October 12th
age: 51 years

 

[drykid]

Funnily enough I went to the Open House London thing today, and one of the places I stumbled across - mainly cos it happened to be near something else I set out to see - was the Old Mortuary at Rotherhithe. According to the tour they built it cos so many people were drowning in the Thames in the 19th century that they needed a special building to hold all the bodies they dredged from the river while they were waiting for them to be identified.  Slight gruesome, but anyway it seemed topical to this thread.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's update; Sundays are always the most interesting days for Nat.

[Ruskie]

Nathaniel seems to have only one thing on his mind this Sunday 20th - and it's not Ann. 

But at least he was highly gratified. 

A lot to investigate from today's entry, and I love his remark about Granny Shepard. 

[drykid]

Nathaniel seems to have only one thing on his mind this Sunday 20th - and it's not Ann. 

I guess I'm a bit disappointed by that, although the rest of the entry more than made up.

But at least he was highly gratified. 

Heh I love the idea of him enjoying the Whitchurch tombs so much that he had to go back and take another look the same day.  As has been said before; a strange lad...

The Church of St Lawrence, Little Stanmore (aka Whitchurch) is still standing thankfully:

http://www.little-stanmore.org/Building.shtml

Unlike the previous church Nat went too, this one definitely looks like it retains the original gate:



Shame Nat didn't carve on that one instead

EDIT: actually after typing this I read the description on that site again and the description of the church sounded strangely familiar.  After a bit of thinking I remember that it was featured in an interesting doc about Handel that I saw on TV recently.  By a stroke of luck, that section of the doc is on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiUYiTgA5c

you should definitely give this a watch; I think after seeing it you'll see why Nat was so struck by the church interior.

[Siamese Girl]

I've got lost in a maze of Brydges/Chandos/Chatfields/Osborns. A great grandaughter of the Ist Duke of Chandos, Mary Osborn who married Allen Chatfield dies 18 September 1761, so that might be her in the big coffin 

I can't really comment on people going to view coffins as earlier this month I visited Hythe in Kent, where the church's main attraction is the crypt which is stacked high with medieval bones. Nat would have adored  it 

Carole

[Siamese Girl]

Drykid - Thank you! Somehow I missed the programme on Handel and if it wasn't so early in the morning and my brain not quite working yet I'd have realised Duke of Chandos = Handel's patron.

Not only is the interior of the church fabulous I've also got to hear a beautiful rendition of 'The flocks shall leave the mountains' form Acis and Galatea which I love 

Carole

[Daisy Loo]

Was Dispatch the newspaper of the day?

[Siamese Girl]

I had a look of the C19th Newspaper site - they only have 3 years worth of The London Dispatch, so if Nat is getting all his information about who died from it we can't see the editions of it that he was looking at:


London Dispatch     
Audience:      General 
Publication Format:      Newspaper
Full-Text Coverage:      Sep 17, 1836 - Oct 06, 1839
Frequency:      Weekly
Language:      English
Place of Publication:      London , England 
Available Issues:      160


Carole

[steve_gus]

This shows a picture of the monument of the duke and his two wives that Nat refers to - the vault is still there and like Nat, can be visited on a Sunday (saw this mentioned on another site, cant remember link now!)

http://www.dukesofbuckingham.org.uk/places/Whitchurch/whitchurch.htm

bottom of page

ps - this pic makes it look even grander

http://www.little-stanmore.org/Chandos.shtml