Curious Epitaphs, Collected from the Graveyards of Great Britain and Ireland.Andrews, William
General
Curious Epitaphs, Collected from the Graveyards of Great Britain and Ireland.
Andrews, William
Epitaphs -- Great Britain
It is worthy of note that he was the first to set up, for the public
accommodation of visitors to Harrogate, a four-wheeled chaise and a
one-horse chair; these he kept for two seasons. He next bought horses and
went to the coast for fish, which he conveyed to Leeds and Manchester. In
1745, when the rebellion broke out in Scotland, he joined a regiment of
volunteers raised by Colonel Thornton, a patriotic gentleman, for the
defence of the House of Hanover. Metcalf shared with his comrades all the
dangers of the campaign. He was defeated at Falkirk, and victorious at
Culloden. He was the first to set up (in 1754) a stage-waggon between York
and Knaresborough, which he conducted himself twice a week in summer, and
once a week in winter. This employment he followed until he commenced
contracting for road-making. His first contract was for making three miles
of road between Minskip and Ferrensby. He afterwards erected bridges and
houses, and made hundreds of miles of roads in Yorkshire, Lancashire,
Cheshire, and Derbyshire. He was a dealer in timber and hay, of which he
measured and calculated the solid contents by a peculiar method of his
own. The hay he always measured with his arms, and, having learned the
height, he could tell the number of square yards in the stack. When he
went out, he always carried with him a stout staff some inches taller than
himself, which was of great service both in his travels and measurements.
In 1778 he lost his wife, after thirty-nine years of conjugal felicity, in
the sixty-first year of her age. She was interred at Stockport. Four years
later he left Lancashire, and settled at the pleasant rural village of
Spofforth, not far distant from the town of his nativity. With a daughter,
he resided on a small farm until he died, in 1801. At the time of his
decease, his descendants were four children, twenty grandchildren, and
ninety great-grandchildren.
[In one of our articles in _Chambers's Journal_ we furnished the foregoing
sketch, and it has since been reproduced in many newspapers and in several
volumes.]
In "Yorkshire Longevity," compiled by Mr. William Grainge, of Harrogate, a
most painstaking writer on local history, will be found an interesting
account of Henry Jenkins, a celebrated Yorkshireman. It is stated: "In the
year 1743, a monument was erected, by subscription, in Bolton churchyard,
to the memory of Jenkins; it consists of a square base of freestone, four
feet four inches on each side, by four feet six inches in height,
surmounted by a pyramid eleven feet high. On the east side is inscribed:--
This monument was
erected by contribution,
in ye year 1743, to ye memory
of HENRY JENKINS.
On the west side:--
HENRY JENKINS,
Aged 169.
In the church, on a mural tablet of black marble, is inscribed the
following epitaph, composed by Dr. Thomas Chapman, Master of Magdalen
College, Cambridge:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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