William and Catherine Phillips and three of their children
William Phillips is one of the many Phillips family buried at Stoneleigh. One of the ten children of Edward and Elizabeth Phillips of Fillongley, he was born in April 1749 and baptised at Shustoke on 14 April. He became a wealthy landowner and maltster in Coventry, handing on considerable property and wealth to his family at his death on 26 November 1801.
Catherine Phillips nee Rotherham (her name is sometimes given as Katherine) was baptised in Claverdon on 27 December 1759, the daughter of John and Catherine Rotherham. Her brother John had been christened there in 1758; he went on to marry Bridget Kevitt, their descendants becoming important Coventry watchmakers. Another sibling,
Mary, baptised in Claverdon in 1762, married
Joseph Sammons and they are buried at
D 20.1 and
D 20.2.
Catherine and William Phillips took out a marriage licence at Coventry St Michael on 1 September 1785; he was already a widower, but his first wife's name is unknown. It is not known, either, whether he had any children by this first marriage. Catherine and William had four children before her untimely death in September 1790 at the age of 30. She was buried on 8 September. The registers also record the burials of
Mary, her daughter, just a few weeks later on 18 October and
Thomas, her son, on 6 November. The gravestone, though badly eroded, seems also to commemorate the second eldest son,
William, whose baptism had been recorded on 13 June 1788 at St Michael's Coventry, and who died, probably, at the end of September 1808 as he was buried on 4 October.
After Catherine's death, William remarried on 22 October 1796, and his second wife was Mary nee Lee, from Stoneleigh. They had a son, Joseph, and a daughter, Sarah. He died on 26 November 1801, in Coventry, and was buried at Stoneleigh on 2 December, the register stating "maltster from Coventry." Mary was granted probate, on 19 December 1801, along with Joseph Phillips, possibly William's brother, who was born in 1754.
Catherine and William's eldest son
Edward Phillips, is buried with family members at
D 14.5. William's brother Thomas, a long-serving gardener to the Leighs, is buried at
B 13.4.