Stroud Cemetery

“Are there no workhouses?” asked Mr Scrooge,

(In a manner of speaking)

“Well, yes there are”, she politely replied,

(In a manor of speaking)

“Do you know Stone Manor on Bisley Road,

Near Stroud Cemetery’s Pauper’s Path?”

(Rattle his bones over the stones,

He’s only a pauper who nobody owns)

Here comes the creaking wheelbarrow,

With the open hinged, burnished coffin,

The shrouded corpse ready for the open pit,

An abrupt incarceration on the hard rock,

Without ceremony or by your leave,

Anonymous resting place for the restless dead,

Feeling gravity’s pull down the steep scarp,

And the noxious effects of the acid soil;

But with soil so thin, rock so hard, pits so shallow,

Cotswold storms raining in from the sea

Would disinter corpses, the slipping dead,

Strange meandering memento mori,

Gewgaws, bones, trinkets, keepsakes,

Grave work for Old Father Time in his sou-wester,

Leaching the dead down rain-washed rivulets,

Down to the Frome, thence the Severn and the sea,

While forget me nots waved goodbye in the wind.

Now it is time for us to wave goodbye and say farewell to what was once Bar Nine in Union Street. Ever remember the memorial on the wall inside that states the following: IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THE BENEVOLENCE INTEGRITY AND PERSEVERANCE WITH WHICH THE LATE EDWARD PALLING CARUTHERS ASSISTED FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS OF HIS LIFE AS CHAIRMAN OF THIS BOARD IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE AFFAIRS OF THE POOR. THIS TABLET IS INSCRIBED BY THE UNANIMOUS WISH OF THE GUARDIANS NOVR 1842.