It is perhaps appropriate that brambles have long been associated with funerals, its young shoots being used to bind the sods on newly-made graves in village churchyards.

The summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves.

Perhaps this also helps to explain the sheer abundance of brambles in the graveyard by St Mary and St Margaret Church, and why if you turn your back for a few weeks they have taken over again. A week or so ago, I set about reclaiming, not for the first time, a few graves which brambles had succeeded in obscuring. One was the grave of the Fowler-Griffin family.

 

1881 was not a good year for Margaret Taylor Young Griffin née Waddell. Her husband of only nine years died and she and her children were spread around the country being taken care of by various family members or at school. Margaret had married Edwin Perrins Griffin in 1871. She met him when he was living close to the home her mother had set up with her stepfather, Thomas Buxton. Over the next few years they had three children, Edwin Herbert born in 1872, Lionel Bruce born in 1874 and the youngest, Margaret Jeannie Muriel born in 1878.

Margaret was not a stranger to early death and changes. She was born on 27th September 1846 in Scotland, the daughter of Michael Waddell and his wife Jane Morrison née Mathews. Michael died when Margaret was young and by 1861 she is a pupil at a school in Lichfield, whilst her mother has remarried and is living in Fazeley with her new husband Thomas Buxton and children born of that marriage.

For many years after Edwin’s death, Margaret cared for the children and ran her own house with the help of a servant. The 1891 shows her living at Slade Road in Erdington and records her as living on own means. In 1894 she married Henry Fowler. Henry was a wealthy surveyor living at Penns Lane, Sutton Coldfield. Somewhere between 1901 and 1910 the family had moved and were living at the Elms, Castle Bromwich which is where Margaret died on 22nd February 1910. She was buried in Castle Bromwich Graveyard. Probate shows her estate was worth around £267 equivalent to about £31,000 today.

Henry Fowler had grown close to his stepchildren and Edwin known as Herbert and Margaret known as Muriel continued to live with him. Margaret’s other son, Lionel had married in 1905 and was living in Walmley. Margaret married Owen Mitchell in 1916. Henry died in 1924 and was buried with his wife. Two of Margaret’s children were also buried in the grave.

 

In loving memory of Margaret beloved wife of Henry Fowler who died 22nd February 1910. Also Henry Fowler her husband who died 6th March 1924 and of his stepson Herbert Griffin son of Margaret Fowler who died 25th May 1929. Also of Muriel Mitchell daughter of Margaret Fowler who passed away to immortal life on 16th August 1935.