Stratton-on-the-Fosse: St Benedict

The graveyard at Stratton-on-the-Fosse was established after the Benedictine Monastery of St Gregory had been founded in 1814 after the expulsion from Douai following the French revolution. The church dedicated to St Benedict itself opened in 1857. This served the Catholic population of the village and the surrounding area, the priests coming from the Abbey. The burial registers from 1856 made use of pre-printed Libri Defunctorum in the same format as those used for Perrymead Cemetery, Bath with the entries in Latin. Those buried include many who worked on the estate and at Downside School as well as some with associations with the school.

The book St Benedict’s Stratton on the Fosse Somerset A History by Frances Daniels, Gerald Brine and Dom Aidan Bellenger (2014) has a history of the church and parish life. It also contains, in Appendix 9, a plan of the graveyard and a transcript of the entries in the burial register with, for some, the locations. It has a record of the inscriptions on the surviving memorials made by Sir Mervyn Medlycott in 2004, this omitting any memorials after 1960. This survey deliberately omitted a map on the grounds that “family historians … have little interest in plans”. The recording was not of the inscriptions but the salient facts such as name, date of death and age.

Row and plot numbering scheme