Search for relatives of family buried at All Saints Church

Evesham Parochial Church Council is looking for relatives of a man and wife and their son who died in the 1800s.

Their gravestone at All Saints Church has been damaged and the family are needed to help restore it.

Reverend Andrew Spurr, vicar of Evesham, said: “Memorials over time suffer degradation simply through time and weather. 

“Evesham Parochial Church Council (PCC) has a responsibility for maintaining a churchyard where its memorials do not constitute a threat to health and safety. 

“The maintenance of any memorial falls to the family of the deceased.”

The memorial has been damaged over time (Image: All Saints Church)

An appeal to find relatives was shared on All Saints Church’s Facebook page.

The memorial belongs to a Thomas Nelson Foster and his wife Edith, along with their son, Robert.

Mr Foster was born on January 23, 1799, at Bromley Hall in Middlesex.

He died on June 1, 1858.

Mrs Foster meanwhile was born in Wickhamford on Christmas Eve, 1807.

She died in Cheltenham on July 22, 1892.

Their son was born on March 1, 1839, and died just 30 days later, on March 31, 1839.

The memorial belongs to a family who all died in the 1800s (Image: All Saints Church)

Revd Spurr added: “Wherever possible, the PCC makes contact with the family to draw their attention to any memorial associated with them that is coming close to becoming a public liability. 

“In a closed churchyard like Evesham’s, where there hasn’t been a bodily interment for over a century, it is harder to find family members, which is why we have resorted to social media.

“If we are unable to locate interested relatives, then the PCC’s responsibility is to make the memorial safe.  While the costs of this should be borne by the family of the deceased, we often have to bear that cost ourselves in the interests of our duty to public safety.”