28th May 2014 - Nottingham Road Cemetery – Cave Grave Question
Nottingham Road Cemetery – Cave Grave Question
On asking at the Nottingham Road Cemetery Office for details of the location of the grave of Thomas & Mary Jane Cave, we found that the records showed:
Thomas Cave buried 24/8/1904
Mary J Cave buried 23/12/1920
Phylis Eyre buried 29/5/1928 aged 16
Phylis doesn’t appear on the headstone. Cemetery records show that Phylis Eyre lived at 42 Stables Street Derby. The records from that time do not show who authorised the burial in the family plot.
But who was she?
Firstly we decided to find if there were any Eyres living at 42 Stables Street on the 1911 census.
The 1911 census showed that Frances Maud Eyre aged 31 born in Derby was living there, one of her children was named as Frederick Cave Eyre. Phylis Eyre was 16 when she died, so was born in 1912. She could have been a daughter born after census date, so we needed to check if there was a Frances Maud Cave of the right age on the 1901 census.
The 1901 census showed a Frances M Cave age 21 born in Derby, her mother was Mary J Cave born in Kingston on Thames. This is the Mary Jane Cave on the gravestone. So it is a reasonable assumption that Phylis Eyre is the granddaughter of Thomas & Mary Cave.
What did William Henry Downing look like?
William Downing, who appears on both Chaddesden War Memorials, was the uncle of Sandra and Fred. He was one of 9 children, 3 brothers and 6 sisters. The brothers were William, Frederick and Richard.
A box of family photographs were held by the youngest son of Frederick. Unfortunately they weren’t labelled and hadn’t been looked at for many years. Going through them we found many possible photographs from this time. However we knew that William served in the Notts & Derby Regiment. Richard didn’t serve in WW1, Frederick served with the Army Service Corps, the family have his military medal; other photographs were of a soldier in the veterinary service, from a different branch of the family. There was only one photograph of a man in uniform which could possibly be William. We took this photograph to the Sherwood Forester’s archivist who identified the uniform and confirmed it was William Downing.
The box of photographs yielded a wealth of family information, including a photograph of Richard and letters from WW1 which added immensely to the family information from this time. We have been able to share this information with other family members.