Staunton St Mary

Churchyard

Churchyard	Site of Staunton Chapel
Grave marker to William Brown (1725)	Detail of Ann Wilson's grave marker

The churchyard is irregular in shape, with the church positioned in the northern area on a south west-north east axis. A slight adjunct to the churchyard, lying on the south side, might represent the position of the former extra parochial Staunton Chapel. There are mature trees to the south and north west of the church and entrances to the churchyard on the north and east sides. A formerly separate access road, to the north, is now rarely used and the principal access is now gained from the driveway leading to Staunton Hall which lies to the south east of the church.

In 1923 Harry Gill in an article about Staunton describes some interesting graves in the churchyard. In the north-west of the churchyard, near to the gate, are two extra-mural grave covers that stand side by side (see the Archaeology section for further details). There is another near to the first two and then another near the south wall of the chancel. None of these graves bear any inscription. One of them has faint traces of a name, but Harry Gill believes that these were a later addition, probably in 1568 by Robert Staunton.

There is also a memorial to the crew of a Lancaster bomber that crashed near Staunton in February 1943 on its way back to RAF Syerston from a training exercise. The inscription reads:

This memorial is to
commemorate the lives of
the crew of Lancaster W4270
which crashed one mile
North West of this site
on the 18th February 1943

“Per Purum Tonates”
“Thundering through the clean air”

WO2 T.H. Warne
Sgt. R.J. Preece
Sgt.J. Coaker
Sgt. E.J. Loverock
Sgt. J.M. Miton Whitehead
Sgt. T.R. Newton
Sgt. G.A. Hitchon