The family vault of Edward Phillips of the City of Coventry, Land Surveyor
Edward Phillips' parents were
William Phillips and
Catherine nee Rotherham and he was baptised on 25 June 1786 at St Michael's Coventry. Unfortunately the registers are not available, but his father was a considerable landholder and a maltster who owned many of the principal inns in Coventry. William and Catherine are buried at
D 16.7.
Edward went on to marry, on 14 February 1815, his first cousin
Catherine Sammons, at Stoneleigh church. Their first child Emma was born in October and baptised on 17 October. Edward was at this time described as a land surveyor of Well Street in Coventry. He had served his apprenticeship with Thomas Eagle, one of the foremost surveyors locally at that time.
Catherine was the daughter of
Joseph Sammons and his wife
Mary nee Rotherham. (
D 20.1 and
D 20.2 )She was born in 1795 and baptised at St John's Coventry on 7 July.
By the time of his death Edward, who had become an alderman, was the owner of a great deal of land and property. He had two addresses, Well Street in Coventry - presumably later his professional address - and Whitmore Hall, or Whitmore Park, in Coventry. The house later gave its name to a district of Coventry.
Edward and Catherine had eleven children in twenty-one years. Three of them,
Emma,
Helen Augusta Hook and
Maria Louisa Catherine are commemorated with their parents.
Catherine died on 20 March 1836, probably as the result of childbirth since her last child, Maria Louisa Catherine, was baptised two weeks later on 3 April in Coventry. Catherine was buried on 26 March at Stoneleigh, aged just 40.
Edward died many years later, on 26 September 1855. In an early draft of his will he had expressed a wish to be buried in the family vault "in Stoneleigh church". The vault is in fact outside, on the south side of the church, and his funeral actually took place at Corley on 3 October. A memorial stained glass window commemorates him in Holy Trinity Church, Coventry, dedicated by his son Edward. In his will he bequeathed sums of money to the Girls' Bluecoat School and the Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital; he had also given land to build a school at Keresley. His portrait, painted by renowned Coventry artist David Gee, hangs in the Herbert Art Gallery.
The aforementioned
Emma, born in October 1815, lived to be only seven years old, dying in February 1822 and being the first to be buried in the family vault on 18 February.
Helen Augusta Hook lived to be just nine: she was born in late 1831 but died on 14 March 1841; she was buried on 20 March. The youngest child,
Maria Louisa Catherine, born in 1836, also died relatively young, at the age of 23 in early 1859; she was buried at Stoneleigh on 28 January. The register recorded her residence as Fletchamstead, which may mean that she had been living with some of her mother's relatives, the Sammons, at Fletchamstead Hall, following the deaths of both her parents. She had been recorded in the 1851 census as visiting a farm in Tile Hill Lane, where she was described as a surveyor's daughter.
