The large vault of the
Jepson family commemorates several family members.
Alfred and Margaret Jepson (nee Hutcheon) had twelve children, of whom five are named on the box tomb. Alfred himself was the seventh son of a Lincolnshire physician and followed his father into practice in Lincoln before moving to Leamington in 1860 and becoming a dental surgeon there. For over 30 years he was a dental surgeon at Warneford Hospital. He lived for many years at Thornby House in Kenilworth and was churchwarden at St John's for 20 years. He and Margaret had been married since 1858; he died on 20 February 1907 and Margaret died on 30 October 1911.
One of the children,
Gertrude, is named along with her husband
Nigel Hatton. Gertrude outlived her husband by many years: they married in 1904 but Nigel died in 1913 in St Ives, Huntingdonshire, and she lived until 1958, and died in Fulham. Nigel was a solicitor from a wealthy Cheshire family.
Two of the children,
Dudley and Ethel, died before their first birthdays, Dudley just 4 months old in May 1865, Ethel only 9 days old in January 1867.
Another,
Bertha, died when she was two, in April 1876. All three are buried in the vault, though there is a separate tombstone to Dudley (
B12.5).
Edith, however, was married at St John's Kenilworth in June 1882 to Charles Ironmonger of Tettenhall near Wolverhampton, died just two months later on 21 August aged 22, and is interred at Tettenhall.
Details of the other children might be of interest:
Sidney died aged 8 in 1875;
Blanche married
Henry Walker (see
B3.1); Victor was a doctor and died in 1928 in Hampshire, (married with two daughters); Harold, like his father, was a dentist and surgeon at Warneford Hospital and died in Richmond in 1946 (childless); Vincent was a farmer in Kenilworth, married with two children, and died in 1961; Alfred also became a dentist, who practised in Queens Road, Coventry and died in 1955 (he married Vera Simmonds but divorced her and she married Frederick Jackson (see
B1.1); Edgar died in 1938 in Hampstead, a prolific novelist and grandfather of the famous writer Fay Weldon!
