Lambourne End

I discovered recently an excellent website containing the history of the Parish of Lambourne and I am indebted to Phil Reeves, who is responsible for the site, for allowing us to quote from it.

I recommend that you visit the site, which can be found at www.oldlambourne.co.uk.

Our first story concerns the activities of resurrectionists in 1821, who were apprehended whilst operating far from their usual London haunts by a brave village constable.

1st November, 1821

James Adam, Constable of Abridge, went last night about nine o'clock to the Blue Boar having heard there were two men there with a horse and cart of a suspicious appearance. There the name of the cart was William Hollis of Thomas St Newington Surrey No 146174. The men got in the cart and went in the direction of Ongar, i.e. the churchyard. The constable went to get his mare but before he could do so the cart returned with a third man through the village along the London Road at rapid speed.

He did not have the chance to stop the cart for two miles at Chigwell. When he did there were four men in the cart. He took two men into custody but in the scuffle two men escaped. The men charged were William Crouch and James Crouch.

On searching the cart he found a female child's body of Mrs Barker, which had been buried the Sunday before; in the cart was also a shovel.

John Jones, undertaker, stated that on Sunday 28th October last, he conducted the funeral of Sarah, the infant of William Barker, shoemaker for Abridge, and screwed the lid of the coffin she was to be in and saw it placed in the grave made in the churchyard.

William Barker went about ten o'clock to the Blue Boar to see the body of a child taken from some men at Chigwell from the cart, and found it to be the body of his daughter Sarah, age eight years old, buried in Lambourne Churchyard the Sunday before.