Rowley Regis Online.

A selection of images from Sunday afternoon at Bumble Hole.

Or,(How much fun can 2 grannies have on a Sunday afternoon?)

If you haven’t been bitten by the Family History Bug you might wonder how two middle aged women, who’ve only met once before ,can spend five hours ferreting around in graveyards (with a short rest at a pub) and not be bored. Well boring was the last thing it was. Tiring, definitely but rewarding and a laugh from start to finish, although I think that had more to do with the people doing it rather than the main subject matter. Thinking back, I doubt if there was more than a couple of moments of silence.

While I was waiting for Sedge to arrive, I took the opportunity to inspect the ridge shaped Blue Bricks on top of the perimeter wall around St Paul’s Churchyard...... I know, life can’t get much more exciting than this can it? But I had to fill in the time while Sedge was still getting her hair right!

I was wondering if the bricks were from the Cakemore Brick Company, which they weren’t but I did find the name of the makers on some of them.

'Jennings and Chavasse of Rowley and Dudley', I’ve never heard of them but thought it might be of interest to someone researching either of those names.

We had hoped that we would be looking for Sedge’s Grandparent’s grave but we now know there isn’t a plan of the Churchyard and they don’t have a visible headstone. One thought was that they might have been buried with Sedge’s Great Grandfather, Edwin Rollason. His own memorial was completely covered in grass when we found it on our first trip, There was still a lot of grass on there and there was a faint hope we might find another memorial hidden in the grass.

Sedge, ever the practical one, had come armed with a trowel and TWO pairs of gardening gloves. Obviously I was not just the chauffer then!

You can see some similar graves in the foreground and you can see how overgrown they are.

So we set too and tried to remove all the grass, which was pretty well impossible but we removed enough to be sure there wasn’t another marble plinth lurking in there. So it looks as if the exact location will remain a mystery.

At least it is now possible for a passer-by to read Edwin’s memorial.

It’s a lovely, cosy old pub and the view from the gardens is quite amazing.

Next stop was St Luke’s, looking for Pte A Rose’s  grave.

Sadly, it is no longer there, there must be hundreds that have been destroyed, as its a very large area that has been cleared.

Once we realised that his grave had been in the area that was cleared we started looking at a number of stones that have been placed around the walls of the Churchyard.

 In places it was easy but in others, some bright spark had planted these Laurel bushes, which are not only very dense, they are at the moment covered in flowers that give off clouds of pollen.

The vandalism there really was upsetting and these pictures speak for themselves.

This view is looking up towards the church from the approximate location of Arthur Rose’s grave.

And this is looking from near the church to the same spot.

This grave fascinates me, I like it but in a very spooky sort of way.

We then had a quick trip to St Thomas’s (Top Church) Dudley, which has a small but very interesting old Churchyard. I noticed a lot of Harper graves and also one for a Sir & Lady Bean, so I presume they would be from the Harper Bean Car families.

On the way back, by chance, we ended up in Paradise, which seemed like a good ending to the day.

Apologies to Sedge, as she might have a slightly different perspective on some of the things I’ve written here.