On Sunday I went to check up on the family plot in Mortlake. It was last used in 1935 when Uncle G (my grandfather’s uncle, George Leopold Bryan, later Bellew), was buried there and again in 1940 by my great-grandfather’s second wife.
The graveyard has, fairly recently, re-opened for burials which is good news and there seems plenty of room for me.
The family tomb is on the right. The close-up above is of the arms and crest with mantling and motto. Curiously the motto seems to be wrong. Alan wanted me to lie down on the grass on the left to see if I fit. As the grass was distinctly damp I felt that it would just hasten my permanent arrival there. Indeed Uncle G succumbed to a chill on his honeymoon in South Africa.
I can sense non-family readers beginning to fidget so I’ll tell you about a more interesting grave a few yards away. It is that of Richard Burton, the explorer not the actor. He and his wife are buried here in a “tent”.
He was of course Abbey material but his life had been too racey for him to be allowed in there, so here he is in Barnes. There is an iron ladder at the back of the mausoleum which you can climb up to peer down through a circular glass window, like a porthole, upon the coffins of him and his wife. There appears to be an altar with six lamps in front of it. This, as Alan pointed out, is an interesting visual trick. You are looking at a mirror and the altar and three lamps are actually under where you are standing. Furthermore the mirror is not on the far wall of the tomb, so there seems to be a hidden compartment behind the wall with the mirror.
The whole structure was pretty shabby but has been restored with the gilding restored and other details, such as the star that you can see at the top of the picture, replaced.
To cheer us up, here is something by the famiy cartoonist, Paddy Bellew. It’s not signed but it is by him and it (literally) depicts a flight of fancy about the Boat Race at Mortlake.
