The grave of the Clark(e) family records the deaths of both parents and two sons.
Michael Clarke, commemorated here as "father of the above", was presumably born in late 1764 since he was baptised at Stoneleigh on 8 January 1765, the son of Michael and Ann Clark. His father Michael senior was a noted stonemason, and together with fellow villager Robert Johnson, a carpenter, was involved in a great deal of building work at the abbey and in quoting for extensive work to be done at The Swan Inn in 1783. He was resident in Church Lane according to the 1810 map of Stoneleigh village. He also gave evidence in 1828 in the Leigh Peerage Case, stating that he had lived in Stoneleigh all his life and was a bell-ringer. Michael junior, commemorated here, was no doubt destined to follow in his father's footsteps as a mason.
The Michael Clarke "father" recorded on this stone was married to
Catharine Weston (sometimes Katherine in the records) at Stoneleigh Church on 14 November 1799.
Naturally enough their first son was also named
Michael and was baptised on 11 December 1800.
In 1808 a second son,
John, was baptised on 4 September 1808, and these two sons are remembered along with their parents on this tombstone. Neither son lived long, sadly: John died on 26 December 1819, his tombstone stating that he was 13. If this is correct then his baptism must have occurred when he was two years old. Michael died just three weeks later, on 17 January 1820, aged 19.
Michael and his wife Catharine outlived their sons by some years: he died on 19 June 1841 and Catharine on 3 January 1843. At the time of their deaths they lived at Mill End, Kenilworth.
Perhaps it is fitting for a stonemason's family that their fine slate stone was commissioned from the abbey stonemasons Alcutt of Coventry, who had carried out much of the refurbishment of Stoneleigh Church in the early nineteenth century and with whom the family must have been acquainted.
