In February 1812, Joanna Jones, the widow of Robert Jones of Fonmon, in the Vale of Glamorgan, died in Twickenham. What she was doing there, we will probably never know. Twickenham in the early nineteenth century was a village on the outskirts of London and a very fashionable place to live: near enough to the city to be convenient, far enough away to be comfortable. There were a number of very imposing mansions – the most famous probablly being Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill. (More about all this at Twickenham: Introduction | British History Online .) It is more than likely that Joanna was visiting friends there.

She could well have been buried in the parish church at Twickenham: plenty of important people were buried there, and she would have been in good company. (More about the church and its monuments at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol3/pp157-161 .) However, it was decided to take her body back to Fonmon for burial in the parish church at Penmark, where the family had a vault. The undertaker’s bill for the transport of the body and the actual funeral can be found in the Fonmon Collection in the Glamorgan Archives, D/DF F/196. (Grateful thanks to the Glamorgan Archives for permission to publish the transcription below.) The detailed bill provided by John Robins of Warwick Street near Picadilly gives a fascinating picture of the elaborate arrangements for a funeral for a widow of the south Wales gentry.

No expense was spared. Joanna had a triple coffin with all the trimmings. There was a ceremony at Twickenham: the bill includes cloaks, gloves, scarves and bands for those attending there. Then the coffin was taken on a hearse covered with a black velvet pall, drawn by six horses with black ostrich plumes. In front of the hearse, a man walked in procession carring a plaque with more ostrich plumes. There were outriders, other attendants and a coach for the whole journey, and even more to accompany the procession out of London. It’s also likely that some at least of her Twickenham friends would have accompanied the cortege for part of the way.

The full procession went as far as ‘the stones end’ – but what was the Stones’ End? Milestones? Boundary stones? In this document, the Stones’ End seems to have been in Hounslow, but the same phrase occurs elsewhere on the outskirts of London and there is still a street called Stones End leading off the Borough High Street in Southwark. So it seems likely that the Stones’ End was the point at which the paved road ran out, signalling that you were leaving town and heading into the country. (More on this at Stones End, Borough High Street | Know Your London .)

Undertakers’ trade cards often illustrated the transport of the body from an urban area to a country churchyard. (More on this in Dan O’Brien, ‘An Invitation to Mourn: Images of Funerals and Mourners in Funerary Ephemera of Late Eighteenth-century England’ in Robert Spinelli and Robyn S. Lacy, eds, Death, Commemoration and Cultural Meaning (Berghahn, 2026), 27-45.) O’Brien mentions the transport of Thomas Chafyn’s body from London to Mere in Wiltshire in 1731, a distance of about 100 miles taking five days. Joanna Jones’s journey was even longer, taking 13 days to cover a little over 170 miles, a rate of about 13 miles a day. Overnght accommodation would have had to be organised for the horses and attendants, and suitable resting places for the coffin. The bill includes £18 12s. for payment on turnpike roads. There are no details of the route they took. By the early nineteenth century, most maps marked the main route through south Wales from the bridge over the Wye at Chepstow, but this route took traffic from the ferries across the Severn, which would not have been possible with a hearse, coach and fourteen horses. Alternatively, they could have gone via Gloucester and made their way along the Severn to Chepstow or headed through the Forest of Dean and crossed the Wye at Monmouth.

Then there were the arrangements for the funeral itself. There was a subtle gradation of gifts of clothing: silk scarves for gentlemen, grey beaver gloves for the labourers and the tenants’  wives and daughters, silk bands for servants and postboys. Gentlemen probably accumulated a number of black silk scarves and gloves from family funerals, but for the tenants’ wives these would have been prized possessions and would have served as reminders of the late lady of Fonmon. The minister, John Casberd, received 2 guineas and an Italian crepe scarf. It is perhaps surprising that he was not given anything more elaborate, since he was a member of the family: he had married Joanna and Robert’s daughter Maria Charlotte. A rather controversial figure, he was criticised for his inability to speak Welsh in a parish where that was the only language many of his congregation used. He was a pluralist, being vicar of Llantwit Major and Llysworney and a canon of both Llandaff and Wells. His interests were not local, and he left generous benefactions to his old college, St John’s college, Oxford, where the Casberd Scholarships are still offered to students. Nevertheless, he was buried in the Jones family vault at Penmark: there is a monument to him in the church (fig.2 below) and a tomb chest on the vault (fig. 3).

The whole bill came to over £800, probably about £50,000 in modern money. This could not have been done on the decision of the friends with whom Joanna was presumably staying: it must have been authorised by the family. It is of course possible that her son, also called Robert, was staying with her. Alternatively, the bill includes a small payment to ‘men sitting up with the corps’ for five nights. This would just have allowed time for someone to ride post to Fonmon with the news of Joanna’s death and to have returned with instructions for her lavish procession.

John Robins also worked as a cabinet maker and auctioneer. He appears in the Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840  (online at R | British History Online ). Funeral arrangements were thus only a part of his business. He presumably operated on a large scale, though, if he was able to supply an elaborate nested coffin at fairly short notice, to provide horses and carriages and attendants and to hire out velvet palls and other decorations for at least three weeks, plus more lavish staffing for a shorter period in London, while presumably still having enough equipment and manpower to deal with any other funeral business that might come his way in the meantime. Alternatively, it is possible that he hired or bought at least some of the equipment from one of the larger undertakers.

It is perhaps surprising that Joanna herself has no memorial. There are other family memorials in the church and churchyard at Penmon and she is mentioned on the monument to her sons (fig. 4). The church was extensively rebuilt in the nineteenth century and it is possible that a monument has been lost. Alternatively, did the family content themselves with giving her such a magnificent send-off and feel no need for a more permanent memorial?

Transcript (by kind permission of Glamorgan Archives)

Warwick Street Golden Square

The Executors of Mrs Jones

To John Robins

Funeral of Mrs Joanna Jones

1812 Feb^y 27

Gallery

• Fig. 1: wall monument with early history of the Jones family
• Fig. 2: wall monument to the Rev. John Casberd, his wife Mary Charlotte Jones and their son John Robert Casberd
• Fig. 3: the Casberd chest tomb on the Jones family vault outside Penmark church
• Fig. 4: Wall monument commemorating Robert and Oliver Thomas, sons of Robert and Joanna Jones