D22.15

Gilbert Edwin Johnson Although the name on this Celtic Cross is now badly weathered, it appears to commemorate young Gilbert Edwin Johnson. He was the fifth of the eight children of James William Johnson and his wife Esther Priscilla Johnson nee Gray. James was a surveyor and clerk of the works for the Leigh estate. Many documents exist showing payments to him for all kinds of repair work done at Stoneleigh. He and his wife lived in Stoneleigh for about ten years in the 1850s and early 1860s; the last time they appear in the census, they are living at the park-keeper's lodge. They left, James following where his work took him, to live in Staffordshire and Worcestershire. It is sad to note that Gilbert is the only one of their children to be commemorated in Stoneleigh: he was born in early 1865 after the family had moved to Hanbury in Worcestershire, and died in April of the same year. There is no record of his being buried at Stoneleigh, and so the stone seems simply to be a commemoration. The next headstone to his, D 22.16, is that of his maternal aunt, Jane Anne Gray - his mother's sister. Each of the Gray sisters had assisted their father Charles as schoolteachers at Stoneleigh, before he moved on to teach at Shustoke. Perhaps the family held Stoneleigh in some affection. His headstone also reads:

He took thee in His mercy A lamb untasked, untried He fought the fight for thee He won the victory And thou are sanctified.

This is a verse from a poem called To a Dying Infant by David Macbeth Moir (1798-1851) which gives particular poignancy.