Animals increasingly appear on modern memorials and I’ve often wondered if they are a totem for the deceased or maybe they just like them or maybe they had a pet. Cats are very common and I’ve seen them either in 2D carved on a headstone or in 3D form as a small statue.
But this one is unusual as it’s very personal, almost in a code, and is on a memorial stone in Brompton Cemetery’s Garden of Remembrance. Most memorial stones are small and people use calligraphy or a very small motif due to the limited size. The family name isn’t stated on this stone and the images are almost playful.
I was lucky enough to meet the widow of the man commemorated on the plaque. She is Maria Kacandes-Kamil and the mommy cat represented her. The two her cats were her daughters and the camel depicted her husband, Steven, who died in 2011. The significance of the camel is a reference
to the family name (you may have guessed it already) which is Kamil. Also note that the mommy cat, Maria, is pointing at the camel to possibly denote the marital bond.
It was lovely to find a modern memorial which had a touch of humour as well as being very personal.
How many casual passer-bys like myself would have guessed the significance of the animals?
The theatre is dark, the audience and backstage staff have all gone home or off to the pub and the final curtain has been brought down. The end of a show, the end of the evening and, in funerary symbolism, the end of a life.
This fine example is from West Norwood Cemetery where it commemorates the Raikes family. Theatre was in their blood and so the sculpture of a theatrical curtain is very appropriate.
But curtains and draperies have always been associated with death and remembrance. There is the old saying which is sometimes quoted on headstones and memorials that the deceased has ‘gone beyond the veil’. An urn on top of a memorial will often have a sculpted piece of cloth draped across it which indicates the division between the living world and the realm of the dead.
In the 19th century and also well into the 20th century drapes were hung over mirrors with curtains and blinds drawn down at windows during the period of mourning. It was as if they were hiding death from the world or containing it within the family. On the Friends of Oak Grove Cemetery website they mention mirrors being covered with black crepe fabric in order to prevent the deceased’s spirit being trapped in the looking glass.
Curtains also feature on headstones where they are depicted as parted in order to display a meaningful symbol or to draw attention to an epitaph that takes centre stage. This example comes from Nunhead Cemetery where the curtains are parted to display a downturned dove which is a symbol of The Holy Ghost.
However the Raikes one is very obviously a theatrical curtain and it’s beautifully detailed. They were powerful players in that flamboyant world and the curtain is a direct reference to this. For example, in 1889, they had Sir Edward Elgar and his new wife, Caroline, as guests in their house, Northlands in College Road, Dulwich. This was just prior to his Salut D’Amour being performed at the Crystal Palace.
But the family home had a secret in its basement. This was where Charles Raikes (1879-1945) had constructed his own private theatre. He lived there with his mother, Vera, (1858-1942) and two sons, Raymond and Roynon, from his former marriage. Roynon’s wife, Greta, and their daughter Gretha were also part of the household. Charles lived and breathed theatre and he was ahead of his time when he converted a large billiard room into the Northlands Private Theatre. Nowadays it would be a lavish home cinema with comfy seats and popcorn on tap with his own home movies onscreen. He extended his pride and joy by removing a couple of inconvenient bay windows and then converting a coal cellar and wine cellar into dressing rooms. He was a talented scenic artist and stage carpenter and from 1924 – 1939 the Theatre put on nearly 23 productions a year to an invited audience. This was made up of the Raikes’ friends and relations and the actors and actresses friends as well. The lavish after show parties were renowned.
Charles’ sons continued the links to the entertainment world. Raymond (1910-1998) became a professional actor in the 1930’s and played Laertes to Donald Wolfit’s Hamlet at Stratford upon Avon.
Raymond Raikes taken in 1945 Shared under Wiki Creative Commons
However he eventually became a BBC producer, director and broadcaster. He won several awards over a long career which included pioneering the use of stereo sound in radio drama. In 1975 he retired and is known as one of the three greatest radio drama producers. Roynon became a professional photographer specialising in theatre pictures and also as a stills photographer for the BBC. Greta, his wife, became a theatrical costumier and drama teacher and her daughter, Gretha, in turn became a speech and drama teacher. In a 1997 Dulwich Society article she was also credited with being the curator of the archives of the Northlands Private Theatre.
The quotation below the curtain is from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It comes from the 21st, 22nd or 23rd stanza depending on which version you read. This is the verse in full and is taken from the 1859 translation by Edward Fitzgerald
Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to Rest.
He saw them as a selection of quatrains or Rubaiyats that had been attributed to the Persian poet who was also known as the Astronomer Poet of Persia. Although Fitzgerald’s translation was initially unsuccessful, by the 1880’s, it had become immensely popular. It has influenced many creative people over the years including the Pre-Raphaelites and especially Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Oscar Wilde was also a fan and mentions ‘wise Omar’ in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Agatha Christie, Isaac Asimov, H P Lovecraft and Daphne Du Maurier are amongst many who may have borrowed a line a s a book title or used an Omar like figure within their works. Interpretations of the Rubaiyat can be very free and as a result the quatrains can change their wording. The underlying message of the Rubaiyat appears to be Seize the Day or Carpe Diem in Latin. There are also several references to drinking with the implication that once drinking is over so is life. But this particular line seems appropriate for its use on a headstone.
And so the curtain has bene brought down on the Raikes family but, as I took my photos, I thought I detected a faint smell of greasepaint and the appreciative sound of applause……
One of the most poignant stories from Netherne Cemetery is that of Jean Barboni. He was an 8 year old who died in the hospital in 1915 and whose death haunted his nurse, Elizabeth Martin, for the rest of her life. Ms Martin’s niece, Edith Kelly, contacted her local paper to share her aunt’s memories and her own outrage at the then state of the cemetery. Elizabeth had shared her still vivid memories of Jean with Edith 30 years later after his death. She had devotedly nursed Jean who was born with what we would now call learning difficulties but then was classed as mentally defective. Edgard Barboni, his father, was an officer in the French army and a physicist engaged in top secret chemical warfare work during the First World War. They had had another little boy named Pierre and were finding it difficult to cope as Jean required specialist care. Eventually he was admitted as a private patient in a house for the ‘mentally subnormal’ as the Victorians classed him at Netherne. Edith discovered, through her aunt’s diaries that she had always felt that she had contributed to Jean’s death by allowing him to be put in a pauper hospital, Netherne, where he contracted TB. After Jean’s parents returned to France with Pierre Elizabeth tended Jean’s grave until her own death. Edith was quoted as saying
‘ For as long as I could remember, she regarded him as her own child. I suppose the emotional involvement must have been that much greater because the parents were in France and possibly never visited the grave again.’
As I left the cemetery and walked back around the border of the field again I noticed the large number of flints on the ground. I was tempted to take one home as a souvenir but it was too heavy. However, the local flints provided inspiration for a Netherne patient, Gwyneth Rowlands, who painted faces, usually of women directly onto the ones that she found in the fields around the hospital. She might have even found some in this very field.
Sadly, I could discover very little about Gwyneth, despite her work being on display at the Wellcome Collection recently. She was admitted as a patient in 1946 and stayed there for 35 years probably until it closed in the 1990’s. But on a recent visit to the Wellcome Collection Reading Room I spoke with one of the volunteers, Rock, who told me that Gwyneth may still be alive and she had been in contact with a staff member up until 3 or 4 years ago. She is considered to be part of the Outsider art movement. Gwyneth’s technique was to paint directly onto the flint using watercolour, indian ink and varnish.
Art therapy which subsequently became part of the Outsider or Art Brut movement began at Netherne in 1948 when the pioneering Edward Adamson (1911-1996) became the first artist to be employed full time as an Art Director.
Edward Adamson Shared under Wikipedia Creative Commons licence.
He formed a huge collection of over 4000 pieces of artwork which is now housed at The Wellcome Collection in London. He believed that the creation of art was a healing process especially for those who could not speak or express themselves in any other way. However, Adamson wasn’t a teacher or someone who used the artworks as a diagnostic tool. Instead his approach was as a facilitator artist. He worked at Netherne until his retirement in 1981. Art therapy was also called ‘psychiatric art’ . The Outsider Art movement is concerned with artists who are outside the mainstream, usually self-taught and often living within institutions. It often has no meaning except to the artist themselves although the raw power and emotion of some of these artworks can be really impressive as with Gwyneth’s flint heads.
As I walked over the top of Farthing Downs later on that afternoon heading for Sunday afternoon tea and cakes at Chaldon church I saw the cemetery on the opposite slope. I hoped that it would always be surrounded by large green fields and that its incumbents would always rest in peace under the chestnut trees and wildflowers.
My local allotments are very popular and there’s always half a dozen people working away and getting their hands dirty. They’re watched closely by birds looking for worms in the dug over soil before swooping down for their meal. In summer the allotments burst forth with vegetables: lines of runner beans, rows of cabbages , lettuces and flowers and the occasional fox can be seen strolling through at dusk.
But, if you walk up the slope towards the chain link fence that divides the allotments from the park, you’ll come to a large stone plinth at the top. It nestles amongst the trees that have grown up around it. On one end there is a sculpted swag containing roses for remembrance so it once had a farh more illustrious past. I first saw the plinth from the other side of the fence while on the Kelsey park Woodland Trail looking for fungi to photograph. I wondered what it was. It was far too grand to be an allotment user’s display or flower pot stand. Maybe a small statue had been on top and had since disappeared as the empty pedestal was now in no man’s land. The plinth has also puzzled and intrigued the casual passer-by, dog walker and jogger as they go past. The local legend was that it marked the burial site of a horse which belonged to ‘one of the Burrell girls.’
But it wasn’t until I started researching this article that I managed to source a contemporary engraving of the plinth dating from the 1790’s which was entitled ‘Patch’s tomb’ that I had any evidence for the story. At last I had a name for the incumbent. It looks very grand in the picture with an elegant urn on top which is being admired by a fashionably dressed gentleman with an equally well dressed couple nearby. The perspective looks a little strange as the tomb looks larger than the onlookers. This was a serious monument both in cost and the determination to remember Patch. The location, on a small slope, was no idle choice and can be seen from the lakeside path 150 yards away below if you know where to look. Trees and vegetation have grown up on the small hill obscuring the tomb so it’s much easier to see during the winter die-off.
The Burrells were a prominent, land-owning family in Beckenham during the 16th -19th centuries and some of their descendants are still in the area. They have left a fine collection of monuments in the local church, St George’s.
The Burrells were also connected with Kelsey Park in Beckenham in that the site once formed part of Peter Burrell III’s 600 acre estate and it was a Burrell who built the first manor house there. Confusingly, there were four Peter Burrells and, after exploring their various family lineage, I decided that one of Peter Burrell III’s four daughters was probably the most likely owner of Patch. He also had a son who, strangely enough, became Peter Burrell IV but more of him later. The third Peter Burrell (27/08/1724 – 06/11/1775) was a politician and barrister and in 1748 he married Elizabeth Lewis, daughter of John Lewis of Hackney. There seem to be no pictures of him in existence and, instead, photos of Paul Burrell, Princess Diana’s ex-butler popped up!
Peter Burrell III was called to the bar in 1749, became MP for Launceston in Cornwall 1759-1768 and then MP for Totnes in Devon from 1774 – 1752. In 1769 Burrell was then appointed the Surveyor General of the Land Revenues of the Crown. So he was an ambitious man with considerable connections and wealth. He was also involved with other prominent local land-owning families in Beckenham such as the Cators after whom Cator Park is named. Burrell’s estate in Beckenham is now buried under roads and desirable detached houses with large gardens. But there is a local road called Burrell Row after the family. Peter Burrell I purchased the first Kelsey Park House and estate in 1690. It was extended several times as can be seen in the 1790 watercolour and then became incorporated into the far grander, rambling Victorian Scottish baronial style mansion which replaced it. The original house was a square, modest house which had several later additions.
The first Kelsey Park Manor House in the Georgian style. A square shape so easy to incorporate into the grander mansion that replaced it. This watercolour dates from 1790 and is the believed to be the earliest known picture of the Manor House which had been extended over the centuries. Friends of Kelsey Park newsletter Summer 2008
The four daughters were:
Elizabeth Amelia (1749-1837) – married a gentleman from Cambridgeshire. Richard Henry Alexander Bennett
Isabella Susanna (1750 – 1812) – married Algernon Percy, Ist Earl of Beverley, ancestor to the Dukes of Northumberland
Frances Juliana (1752 – 1820) – In 1779 she married Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland
Elizabeth Anne (1757 – 1837) – She married twice – firstly to Douglas Hamilton, 8th Duke of Hamilton and then secondly, to Henry Cecil, 1st Marquess of Exeter.
Marriages at that time were rarely for love but mainly for the joining of great houses, the exchange of land and also heirs. Frances had eleven children and Isabella had seven who all went onto more illustrious marriages and careers.
Elizabeth Anne Burrell (1757 – 1837) the youngest daughter of Peter Burrell II – I assume the man with her is her second husband Henry Cecil, 1st Marquess of Exeter.
I couldn’t find any further details on this image. https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Burrell-883
The Burrell girls seem to have been the ‘It’ girls of their day with their brilliant marriages into the aristocracy. Peter Burrell IV, the son, achieved even more dizzying heights as he became the Lord Chamberlain of England and the 1st Baron Gwydir of Gwydir Castle.
But it’s the eldest one, Elizabeth Amelia, who may have been Patch’s owner. Peter Burrell III built a house for her on his Kelsey estate where she lived with her husband, Richard Bennett. He was the MP for Newport from 1770-1774 but didn’t seem to have the same illustrious career as his father-in-law and the notes on his political career are brief. Elizabeth would have seen Patch’s last resting place from the house every day of her life as a reminder. I haven’t been able to find a picture of Elizabeth as it would have been interesting to see what she looked like. There’s no clue on the contemporary engraving as to the architect of the tomb and I wondered if Burrell paid for it or did Elizabeth?
So was Patch a young girl’s pet or a teenager’s source of freedom? We’ll never know and I was unable to source any pictures of Patch. It may seem strange to us to lavish such attention and money on a horse’s memorial. But in those days a horse almost certainly gave its owner a certain amount of freedom and independence. An earlier form of horsepower and being a good horsewoman at the time was a major attribute.
I like to think that, maybe when Kelsey Park’s closed and the lights have all gone out in the surrounding houses and apartment blocks, a spectral galloping can be heard. A passing badger or fox may prick up their ears at the sound as a young girl shouts ‘Hi, ho Patch and awaaay!’
In my recent post on the Pointing Finger symbol I was bemoaning that I hadn’t found an example of the downward pointing version.
Someone must have heard me because, lo and behold, as I was pottering through Brompton Cemetery I suddenly saw one. It was on a side path and set back from it in front of a thick clump of brambles which probably engulf it when they’re in high season. Winter is always a good time to look for symbols as the encroaching ivy; brambles and long grass will have died down and don’t obscure them.
There is a fascinating story behind this memorial as it’s the tale of two Irish brothers who first enlisted together at the tender age of 11. They both had action packed lives in military service together until one died before the other at a young age. This confirms what I said in my previous post, that the downward pointing finger denotes an untimely, sudden or unexpected death.
The headstone announced that it was the ‘Family Grave of Thomas Anderson’ and there are six members of the family commemorated on it. The first one was to Andrew Anderson, who was a sargeant in the Coldstream Guards Band until died suddenly, aged 35, on August 11th 1856. Sadly it doesn’t give the cause of death so we can only guess at what might have happened to Andrew. The epitaph also says that his death was ‘regretted by all who knew him’ so he was obviously popular and much missed. Accident? Heart attack? Murder? We may never know but I may do some further investigating.
Underneath Andrew’s epitaph are recorded two more members of the Anderson family. These are Thomas Anderson’s ‘infant daughter’, Alice Jane, who died at 17 months on November 19th 1859 and also his wife and Alice’s mother, Euphan. She died on September 22 1888 aged 63. The quotation underneath reads ‘Sleep on dear one and take thy well earned rest.’
And then underneath is Thomas himself. He died on 15 July 1891 aged 70 with the motto ‘His end was peace.’
Initially I presumed that Thomas was Andrew’s father. But, after doing some online delving, I discovered a post on an Irish library forum by a respondent who claimed to be Thomas’s great, great, great grandson. He was trying to carry out his own research into the family history.
According to him, Thomas and Andrew Anderson were actually brothers, probably twins, who were both born in 1821 and came from Ennis, County Clare. This would fit in with Andrew’s age at death and there were other coincidences between the information on the headstone and what the great, great, great grandson was saying. The unusual name of Thomas’s wife was helpful and this led me to the Clan McFarlane website as McFarlane was her maiden name.
The brothers were very close and, aged 11, they both enlisted in the 40th Regiment of Foot on February 2 1832 and were then both discharged on 7 September 1839 aged 18.
It was the Royal Navy that beckoned next and they set off for adventure on the high seas aboard HMS Wellesley when they enlisted in 1839. They both played their part in the Opium War of 1839 – 1842 and, as a result, they both received the China War Medal. This was awarded to members of the Royal Navy who had ‘served with distinction’ between 5 July 1840 – 29 August 1842.
Watercolour of HMS Wellesley sailing along a rocky coastline before a good wind. Note the red ensign and the single red flag flying from the top of the mizzen mast which indicates readiness for action.
Shared under wikipedia creative commons who have defined it as being in the public domain.
HMS Wellesley (second from left) in the second capture of Chusan on 1 October 1841. Painted by William Joy from a drawing by Captain Crawford. Shared from wikipedia Public Domain. The file has been indentified under copyright law,, including all related and neighbouring rights.
After that they moved on and back into the Army which is where the Coldstream Guards connection comes in. As you might expect they both signed up: Thomas on 8 May 1850 and Andrew on 8 May 1844. Thomas was discharged on 17 May 1860 after becoming a lieutenant. We know Andrew’s story but Thomas’s is less clear.
According to the family member he was living at 6 Hospital Street in Glasgow in 1845 and married Euphan McFarlane in 1863. She came from the Gorbals which always had a reputation as a really tough area and so good preparation for the life of an Army wife. She and Thomas had three more daughters; Elizabeth Euphan, Rosina Edith and Rosina Elizabeth. But there’s no mention of Alice Jane. Both Elizabeth and Rosina Edith married.
But the family member didn’t mention Alice Jane or John so one wonders where they fit in.
Thomas supposedly died in Middlesex but after his death he joined Andrew in Brompton Cemetery.
There are two more Anderson Family members recorded on the headstone; John, Thomas’s son, who died on 15 February 1925 aged 65 and John’s daughter, Isabella, but her dates were too indistinct to read.
Family stories can change over time as they’re handed down through the generations but this seemed to tally with the information on the headstone. I am trying to contact the great, great, great grandson via the County Clare forum for more information.
The Anderson brothers seemed to have led exciting lives in military service and certainly did their bit for King and Country. So rest in peace Andrew and Thomas – you have certainly earned it.
shadows fly away 
