The visit to Islington Cemetery was not as productive as I hoped. It was to be honest a failure. The cemetery is huge, 190 acres, but armed with a list of actual grave numbers I felt confident that I would find some of the graves I was seeking. Sadly, it wasn't to be. My friend and I found the designated areas but other than the edges they were quite impenetrable woodland, deep in weeds and not at all maintained. I did, of course, pay my respects at the War Memorial where my grandfather, Herbert Bayliss, is commemorated. I then totally failed to find the grave of my mother's husband, whose name I bear, despite having always been able to walk straight to it on previous visits. One does get used to dead ends when doing any kind of genealogical research so I wasn't too downhearted about the day and I had enjoyed the bus trip across London which had taken me past so many places that have played a part in our family story. But there was one event that cheered me. While on our way out of the cemetery my friend and I were strolling along reading out loud any interesting inscriptions on the graves at the side of the paths. My friend found one bearing the name Huggins.Knowing that my great Aunt Daisy was married to a man named Huggins who had died during World War One in France, It was a child's grave and it gave not only the parents' initials but the street where they lived, Sparsholt Road, Islington, which was within the area of my interest. I photographed the grave.
When I got home I checked the details against our family tree without any result and then checked the tree of another researcher named Ray Beckman who is particularly interested in the Huggins family. Bingo! He had both the parents on his tree although no record of the child. So something good came out of the day; for me it was only the grave of a very distant relative by marriage but for a fellow researcher it was a real find.
I've since discovered some more recent 1920's and 30's burials at the cementery so I will possibly make the trip there again...on a cool day, with a machete and thick boots!
