Wreningham – All Saints Church (James Ebden)

This is the gravestone of James Ebden, located in All Saints Church in Wreningham. It caught my eye as the right-hand side of the grave was never filled in, a husband and wife that aren’t both listed.

James Ebden was buried on 7 March 1836 and the church’s burial record notes that he was aged 59, although the grave says that he was aged 60. A little unusually in terms of the records of this church, but James’s residence was listed as being in Lakenham and not in the village itself.

The name of James’s wife was Bathsheba Bates (a religious name that wasn’t uncommon, but is much rarer today), which isn’t perhaps entirely clear from the grave itself, and the couple had been living at Portland Place in Lakenham. She was buried in the church on 30 December 1859, but her name doesn’t appear on the list of gravestones which have survived.

There seem to be two possible outcomes here, since I can’t imagine she ever remarried and she never changed her surname. She was either buried with her husband, but there was no money to complete the inscription, or, she was buried elsewhere in the graveyard without a stone because no-one realised to connect the couple.

One source notes that the couple had one child, James Ebden (1811-1874) and at first sight that would make the situation strange, as this situation would have been something that he could have resolved. However, the only James Ebden listed as alive in Norfolk in 1871 was at Bethel Hospital which was then listed as a lunatic asylum (better known now as a mental health hospital) in Norwich, which might explain why he hadn’t intervened.

There’s some guesswork here from me, but I suspect that the couple have been buried together, but there was no money to pay for the stone to be inscribed, hence why it was never completed. I do rather quite hope that the couple were reunited in death.