The Stone In the Garden

The Stone in the Garden – Week 24 of the Oswestry Heritage Comics

Heritage is a living thing. Our knowledge of the past – and what it means to us – is constantly evolving. Archaeological excavations, historical research – and even chance discoveries – can bring a new aspect of the past to light, and change the way we relate to it.

Rachel and Mark first got in touch with me via the Hidden Oswestry site, asking whether I could help them identify a piece of carved stone that had turned up in Rachel’s garden on Castle Bank. The photograph they sent showed a fragment of what appeared to be some kind of arch, with a floral motif on one side. As it was a little bit difficult to see some of the details in the photograph, I asked them if they’d mind bringing the fragment to Heritage Open Days so I could have a closer look.

So they did – and everyone got very excited about it when they turned up. Will – at Hidden Oswestry – and I had already talked a bit about a possible date for the stone and where it might have come from – but at our Heritage Open Days stall, we got loads of people curious about the stone and making their own ideas about how old it was and where it might be from originally.

The evidence on the stone itself seems to suggest that the fragment of stone comes from a 19th century ecclesiastical building of some kind – a church of chapel, now demolished. Interestingly, on Beatrice Street – at the bottom of Castle Street – there’s a candidate in the old Wesleyan Chapel: built in the late 1800s and torn down in 1967. Looking at photographs taken during the early 1900s and the 1960s (up on the Oswestry Family and Local History Group site), I can see a couple of possible places where Rachel and Mark’s stone might have come from. It’s possible that the fragment came from the chapel and was used to level the back of Castle Bank during the rebuilding of the Powis Hall Market and laying-out of the Horsemarket carpark.

How do we tell for certain where this stone might have come from? There are a couple of lines of research that we can follow. I’ve asked the Victorian Society for help in identifying the stone; I’ve also asked an online church architecture group if they can suggest any local churches with similar carving – that would help us establish a date for the fragment. Hunting around on the internet, I’ve found what appears to be a similar arrangement of arches and floral carvings on the porch of the Seventh Day Adventist church on London Road in Leicester. A photograph might help us figure out where on a church or chapel Rachel and Mark’s fragment might have originally fit. Don’t suppose anyone out there living in Leicester fancies popping down to London Road and taking a photo of the porch?

I’m planning to revisit this story later in the series. Mark’s already said that, come the spring, he wants to clear more of the rubble at the back of the garden. I’ll be giving him a hand – and there will be another comic to let you all know what we find!

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