Organist Elizabeth Stirling’s Burial Site
Last summer when on a trip to England, I finally saw nineteenth-century British organist Elizabeth Stirling’s final resting place.
Eilzabeth Stirling at the Organ of Saint Andrew Undershaft
(Courtesy of Stephen Best)
Many years ago, I thought I had located Stirling’s grave site. In 1863, when organist at Saint Andrew Undershaft in the City of London, Stirling had married Frederick Albert Bridge, a bass singer in her choir and much younger than his wife. Stirling died before her husband, of natural causes at age 76, and in his will, Bridge expressed his desire to be buried “with my dear wife in the grave at Abney Park Cemetery.”
His wish was carried out, but when I visited Abbey Park Cemetery near Stoke Newington High Street in the London Borough of Hackney, I discovered that the grave site is that of Bridge’s second wife, Mary, not his first wife, Elizabeth. A year after Stirling’s death, on 2 April 1896, Bridge, age 54, had married Eliza Mary Perfect Harding, age 51, who had been a vocalist in several publicized concerts in which Bridge and Stirling took part from 1866 through 1869. The marriage lasted 14 years until the death of Mary, as she was called, in 1910 at age 65. Bridge lived another seven years, dying on 29 December 1917 at age 76 from an accidental fall.
Mike Guilfoyle at Elizabeth Stirling’s Headstone, Ladywell Cemetery
Late in 2021, Mike Guilfoyle, Vice-Chair of the Friends of Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries in the London Borough of Lewisham, contacted me with the news that he had “lighted upon the grave” a couple of years prior when researching other headstones in the cemetery. Mike kindly offered to serve as my guide to locate Elizabeth Stirling’s headstone when I was again in London. He added a post script: “I mention Elizabeth in one of my recent website articles as she is buried in the vicinity of two other illustrious organists!” Musicologist George Grove and organ builder George Holdich are buried nearby. Here is the link to Mike’s article:
https://www.foblc.org.uk/2021/12/george-maydwell-holdich-and-haunted.html#.YfkcvPunyV4
On a short trip to London in 2022, I traveled to Ladywell Cemetery but was unable to locate Stirling’s headstone on my own. Months passed before I once again was in London, when I accepted Mike’s offer to serve as my guide at Ladywell Cemetery. On that momentous day, Mike and his friend Phil, who had a camera, took me off the beaten path to a jumble of headstones tucked away under a tree not too far away from the cemetery’s Cross of Sacrifice Memorial to those soldiers who died in the Great War.
Elizabeth Stirling’s Headstone, Ladywell Cemetery
Elizabeth Stirling Bridge (1819–1895) is buried in her family plot where mother Elizabeth (1791–1869), after whom the elder daughter was named, and younger daughter Margaret Stirling (1821–1906) are also interred.
Judy Barger at Elizbeth Stirling’s Headstone, Ladywell Cemetery
I copied the engraving on the headstone that, although worn away by the intervening years, is still readable.
IN
MEMORY OF
ELIZABETH STIRLING
WIDOW OF ROBERT STIRLING
LATE OF POPLAR
DIED AT BLACKHEATH
AUGUST 25 TH, 1869 AGED 78 YEARS.
“COME UNTO ME, ALL YE THAT LABOUR AND
ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.”
THE REMAINS OF HER HUSBAND
WHO DIED AUGUST 15TH, 1844
REST IN THE CHURCH YARD
OF ALL SAINTS, POPLAR
“GOD SHALL WIPE AWAY ALL TEARS FROM
THEIR EYES.” REV. XXI: iv.
IN MEMORY OF
ELIZABETH STIRLING BRIDGE
ELDER DAUGHTER
BORN 26TH FEBRUARY, 1819
DIED 26TH MARCH, 1895.
ORGANIST OF ALL SAINTS POPLAR 1839 – 1858
AND OF ST ANDREWS UNDERSHAFT, LONDON
1858 – 1880.
O PRAISE GOD IN HIS HOLINESS.
ALSO
IN MEMORY OF MARGARET STIRLING
DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE
WHO DIED 7TH NOVEMBER 1906
AGED 85 YEARS.
Headstone in Ladywell Cemetery
Ladywell Road
Ladywell, London SE13 7HY
The cemetery is located on Ladywell Road in Ladywell, in the London Borough of Lewisham and adjoins the Brockley Cemetery, with no clearly defined boundary between the two sites.
For more about Elizabeth Stirling, see additional Blogs on this website under British Women Organists, as well as Judith Barger, Elizabeth Stirling and the Musical Life of Female Organists in Nineteenth-Century England (Ashgate, 2007). The book is out of print but is still found in libraries.
