CFHS code : AG306
Parish : St Andrew the Great
Inscription : In Loving Memory of My dear husband JOHN ROBERT LANCELOT BENNETT d July 19th 1927 also CM BENNETT wife of the above d June 5th 1966
Monument : Scroll/Kerb stones
Above information from Cambridge Family History Society Survey
Lat Lon : 52.203065, 0.13657119 – click here for location
Monument
The kerb stones are located five rows from the west wall and two rows from the west path towards the north of the parish of St Andrew the Great. This is an area that is rarely cleared. Much of the inscription is now damaged and the left kerb stone has fallen.
Inscription
In Loving Memory of My dear husband
JOHN ROBERT LANCELOT BENNETT
died July 19th 1927
Also C M BENNETT wife of the above died June 5th 1966
John (Jack) Robert Lancelot Bennett (29 March 1876 – 19 July 1927)
Jack was the son of John Robert and Jane Sophia Bennett. In 1891 he was apprentice to a watch maker but later he joined his father’s building firm.
On July 6th 1899 he married Carrie Mary Bailey at St Matthews church. They did not have any children. The couple lived at Catherine Street (1905), before moving to Esbourn House, 21 Mill Road where they ran a lodging house (1908). Jack’s brother Arthur Elliot lived at 33 Mill Road. John was given an exemption from conscription to the war, as he was one of three partners working in the family company which was described as a ‘builder, contractor and undertaker’. In Feburary 1917 the exemption was removed, although by that time Jack was 40 years old and it is not thought he served at the front. He did work for the Government Housing Scheme, and had returned to Cambridge by March 1919, where he set up a business in his own right, separate from the family business of J.R. Bennett and Sons. Jack’s business was known as J.R.L. Bennett, which must have been confusing to locals at the time. He was a builder and contractor and adverts at the time promised ‘all branches of the trade executed. Prompt attention and personal supervision guarenteed. Plans prepared. Estimates given for all classes of work’.
Jack died at home aged 51 years old and his funeral was held at Mill Road Cemetery Chapel on 22 July. Representatives of the Cambridge Town Football Club attended the funeral and sent a wreath and his employees ‘met the mourners at the gate of the cemetery’. Carrie left a wreath at the graveside with the message ‘Flowers from the garden he loved; unknown to the world you stand by my side and whisper these words ‘Death cannot divide’, your loving wife’
Carrie Mary Ann Bennett (née Bailey) (2 November 1876 – 5 June 1966)
Carrie was the only daughter of brewer Henry (1845-) and Caroline (née Mayes) (1851-1892). She was born at 242 Newmarket Road and baptised Caroline. Carrie’s only brother Henry Evelyn Bailey died in 1888 aged 8 years, and the family then moved to Braintree, where her father was the manager of the Railway Hotel on Lower Railway Street (1891). They had returned to Cambridge by the following Spring, and her mother died at Occupation Road in February 1892.
After she was widowed she continued to run a Lodging House from 21 Mill Road (1939). She was still at the same address in 1966, and died at Chesterton Hospital aged 89 years old.
* This may have been Henry Bailey who ran The Star Inn in Sun Street
Sources:
CFHS Transcripts of parish and census records
Find My Past – electoral roll
Newspaper archives
Ancestry
By Mary Naylor with further information by Claire Martinsen
[If you have any information about this family, please contact us at Friendsofmillroadcemetery@gmail.com]