Welcome to the website page exploring the history of Lurgashall Parish
The Archive room at the Village Hall is next open to visitors on Wed 10th and Wed 24th JUNE, 2.30pm – 4.00pm.
Contact: archive@lurgashallvillagehall.org
A churchyard story
If you’ve been to our church, you will have walked past a large, brick-built tomb topped with a heavy stone slab right by the main church door.
Several people have asked the Archive if we know who was buried there. There was an inscription on the stone slab, but it is now illegible. Fifteen years ago, however, researchers recording the inscriptions on all the gravestones in the churchyard managed to decipher the first few words:
In memory of JOHN FEILDER who died the 11th of April….
The rest, including the year of death, is lost to time.
We have searched through all the parish registers of deaths and discovered a John Feilder, son of Thomas, who was buried here on 19th April 1641. We think the stone slab might have originallybeen positioned by the altar of the church, with the body buried beneath, but was later moved to just outside the door and on top of a brick surround which is clearly of much later construction.
Throughout the 17th century there was a large family of Feilders – or Fielder or Filder, depending on how the resident rector chose to spell the name! – living in the parish. Thomas Feilder married Susannah and they had at least eight children, including John, who were all baptised in the church. Youngest son Christopher was baptised in 1646, married Elizabeth Budd, and had seven children baptised in the church between 1690 and 1699. The family lived at Brockhurst, and Christopher was a churchwarden for the church until his death in 1701. He was buried in the churchyard – perhaps also in this family tomb.