The Churchyard
A picturesque and peaceful memorial meadow
The extensive graveyard of St Mary’s is a picturesque and peaceful memorial meadow with its oldest recorded tombstone dating back to 1684.
Many are the village dynasties whose names are carved in its stones. Many graves are the title pages of unwritten chapters of histories that we plan to bring to this website.
In the church itself are two early medieval stone coffin lids, perhaps from the tombs of St Mary’s priests. Another has been embedded in the face of the round tower, perhaps to Christianise what had been a pagan era building.
Immediately outside the east chancel wall is the grave of Catherine Harriet Betts, last surviving member of the Betts family who had been settled since about 1480 in Low Road.
Over successive generations the Betts enlarged their modest Tudor home into Wortham Manor, acquired a coat of arms, planted a park and moved from the ranks of the yeomen to the gentry.
There’s no other memorial to Catherine Harriet but the words of her cousin, Frederick Proby Doughty, who wrote of her that she was “a thoroughly scheming, worldly person.” We can’t know if this was fair but she never schemed successfully either for a husband nor an heir.
The tragic death of her 11 year-old nephew Archie Chichester, only child of her older sister Mary, had meant that she lived her last years alone. After her death the manor passed to a distant cousin who eventually sold it to the Rash family. The Rash’s farm at Wortham Hall – perhaps the original pre-Betts manor just north of St Mary’s – to this day.
The grave of Catherine Harriet, the last of the Betts
Farther away in the graveyard is the tomb of the celebrated Wortham rector Richard Cobbold, who recorded his village and his congregation in paintings and words.
Cobbold’s diligent recording achieved him and his village some renown, and kept Victorian Wortham alive in memory to this day.
If you have relatives memorialised at St Mary’s please contact us to send us to your stories for the website.
