Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (Edward Bigland Tomb)

The tomb of Edward Bigland, who died at the age of 50 on 18 May 1760, and is buried at Peterborough Cathedral.

This is Bigland’s baptism record, not the most beautifully presented and organised of documents, but nonetheless it has survived and it shows he was born on 15 July 1710 and was baptised on 21 July 1710.

His first wife was Elizabeth, the daughter of Charles Pitfield, and they had no children. I can’t quite work out where and when she died, but an Elizabeth Bigland was buried at St. James’s Church in Piccadilly in 1741. Back then this was in Middlesex, just a short distance away from where her Pitfield family home was in Hoxton.

Edward Bigland married in 1743 for the second time, to the widow of the antiquary, Dr. White Kennet, who was the son of the Bishop of Peterborough of the same name, and with her Bigland had four children. These were Edward, Mary, Lucy-Eliza and Orme (also known as Anne and Orme was the name of Bigland’s mother).