Fanny Hill
Kindly contributed by Mary Harvey-Wright
I just wanted to share with you the successful outcome of a unanswered question that's been puzzling many of my family for several years - where were my grandparents buried?
Our town, Folkestone, like many other towns had to provide more suitable burial space for its growing population. The little churchyards attached to the various churchyards had all been long outgrown and the disposal of the dear departed was a severe problem. In late Victorian times many private companies were set up to take care of this and I believe it was a very profitable business. The cemetery at Folkestone is a large strip of land alongside the railway line and just outside the main town.
The cemetery has a large mixture of graves ranging from the very simple to the extremely ornate and is very well tended. However, over the intervening years vandalism and the weather have taken their toll and many graves have simply been grassed over.
My grandmother, Fanny, died in 1925 aged just 43 having had 10 children and my grandfather William HILL followed her 20 years later, having raised 8 to successful adulthood. We knew roughly where they were buried but having explored every inch, could never find them. My mother, aged just 7 when she lost her mother, suddenly remembered that one of her neighbours, Edwin WILLIS, lived in the same street, Thanet Gardens, and was buried just next door.
We are having a family visit from New Zealand shortly and I know that they want to visit the grave to pay their respects. Finally I contacted our local Environmental Services and, thankfully, learned that they hold the records and plans of the entire cemetery and, within a day or two, I had instructions on how to find the plot. "Just go through the main gate, turn left, count to 19 and the grave is next to the wall". Well it wasn't quite as straightforward as that and each time I counted I ended up in a different place! In the end, however, I found another little stone marker and cleaned it off to read the name of Edwin WILLIS.
My grandparents' grave had disappeared altogether and was now under the shelter of a spruce tree. My cousin, Owen, and I arranged to meet with our gardening tools to at least cut back the tree and make a little flowered area so that we could pay our respects when the family came over. The tree had a very successful pruning and I was just putting my trowel in the soil to plant some petunias when it struck something hard. We were both on our hands and knees like archeologists gently scraping away the soil and we found the memorial marker, with names and dates and in perfect condition! The flowers are planted and the headstone is in an upright position for all the world to see.
I didn't tell my mother anything of this and then took her to see it. As we grew nearer she said that she thought it was further down, but I took her over to the grave of her parents which she had not seen since her father's death over 50 years ago. It was a very special moment and well worth the digging and pruning! We even gave Edwin WILLIS a spring clean too.
As a postscript, my grandmother had a name in death which she never had in life and was buried with the first name of Grace. The reason was that she didn't want to be known forever after the title of the famous 'naughty' book - Fanny HILL.
Another story of the Hill family
