Grave memorial to George Thwaites and family members

Summary

Grave memorial dated 1855 that includes a high quality sculpture featuring a mourning female figure, the grave being that of a local innkeeper.

Reasons for Designation

The grave memorial to George Thwaites and family members is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* for the high quality of the sculpture forming part of the memorial featuring a mourning female figure;
* as a good example of the Victorian fashion for expensive grave monuments.

Historic interest:
* as one of only a very small number of grave markers that were retained when the former Woodhouse Cemetery was re-landscaped as public open space in the late 1960s.

Group value:
* with the nearby cemetery chapel, lodges and a small number of other surviving grave monuments, including those to Ann Carr and William Darby (Pablo Fanque).

History

What is now known as St George’s Fields was opened as Woodhouse Cemetery in 1835 by the Leeds General Cemetery Company when the Leeds Parish Cemetery became over-filled and insanitary. The cemetery was acquired by Leeds University in 1956 and most of the monuments were cleared after 1965. The area was re-landscaped without disturbing the over 90,000 burials by then contained within the cemetery, and in 1969 the cemetery was reopened as a public open space. The grave memorial to George Thwaites and family is one of a tight group of four memorials that were left in situ, two of which are associated with people of particular historic interest, namely William Darby (professionally known as Pablo Fanque, Britain’s first Black circus proprietor) and Ann Carr, founder and preacher of the Female Revivalist Society. This group of four memorials is one of a small number of similar groupings of memorials left as part of the landscaping.

Burial records and death notices note that George Thwaites, innkeeper of the Spotted Cow Inn on Vicar Lane in Leeds, son of Michael and Sarah Thwaites, died of inflammation aged 44 on 18 September 1855. His son, also George, died of Typhoid Fever on 28 October 1903. No further details of their wives, who are also commemorated on the memorial, are recorded in the burial register.

Details

Grave memorial to George Thwaites, 1855 with later inscriptions to other family members.

MATERIALS: fine-grained sandstone.

DESCRIPTION: the memorial is in the form of a large plinth supporting a high-relief sculpture of a draped mourning female figure leaning against the top of a broken pillar, all placed within a round-arched frame which has a garlanded shield at its apex, the shield with a single five-pointed star. The plinth carries the following inscription:
‘IN AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE OF / GEORGE THWAITES / OF THE TOWN INNKEEPER. / WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE SEPTR 18TH 1855, / IN THE 44TH YEAR OF HIS AGE. / ALSO ISABELLA, HIS WIFE, / DIED AUGUST 11TH 1882, AGED 73 YEARS. / ALSO GEORGE THWAITES, (IRON MERCHANT) / THEIR YOUNGEST SON, / DIED OCTOBER 28TH 1903, AGED 56 YEARS. / ALSO OUR DEAR MOTHER MARIE HOLT THWAITES, / WIFE OF THE ABOVE GEORGE THWAITES, / WHO DIED JANY 31ST 1934, IN HER 73RD YEAR. / NEARER MY GOD TO THEE’

Sources

Websites
Burial record for George Thwaites (died 1855), accessed 08/09/2022 from https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/521733
Burial record for George Thwaites junior (died 1903), accessed 08/09/2022 from https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/570304

End of official list entry

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