William and Mary Judd nee Grimes
William and Mary Judd are commemorated on this stone, and lying next to them, at
D 18.2, are three of their children.
Their son
William Judd and his large family are commemorated on a box tomb in section B of the churchyard, at
B 20.1. In fact William was the only child to survive his twenties.
The Judd family had been tenant farmers for generations on the Leigh estate, working the land at The Hurst. There are eighteenth-century documents showing them frequently supplying anything from hay, to apples, to horses to the Leigh family.
William Judd was born in 1747 to Joseph and Elizabeth nee Dickins, and baptised at Stoneleigh on 31 January 1748. He was one of five children. He married
Mary Grimes, whose parentage is currently unverified, on 14 February 1775, at Stoneleigh. They had six children three of whom died in infancy; Mary, born in 1776, lived to be 22; Francis, born in 1790, lived to be 26; the aforementioned William, the eldest son, lived to be 74.
William himself died on 7 December 1814, but, strangely, was not buried until 22 January 1815. It may have been a cold winter for burials...
Mary had died ten years previously, on 2 May 1804; she was buried on 4 May. They had outlived three of their children.
