Before the Twentieth Century:
On the north wall:
Richard and Martha Knottesford had at least four children: Hannah (baptised 1703), Margaret, on the first memorial, who died, aged 18, in 1725, John (see below) and Eleanor (baptised 1713). Richard Knottesford died in 1714 and Martha in 1733. John married Constance (sic) Woodward at Newent in 1733 and are remembered on the brass plate on the first memorial. They had three daughters: Mary (baptised in 1735), who married Francis Fortescue in 1763, Dorothea (baptised 1741), of whom more later, and Constantia (baptised 1745), who remained unmarried.
Thomas Barnes – the elder - (baptised 1664, died 1727) had two sons George (baptised 1700, died 1750) and Edward (baptised 1705, died 1755). They married the two surviving daughters of Richard and Martha Knottesford. George married Hannah in 1729 and Edward married Eleanor, as his second wife, in 1733. Major General John Barnes was the son of Edward and Eleanor and hence John Knottesford’s nephew. His memorial records his long military service.
Thomas Barnes – the younger - (baptised 1737) was the son of George and Hannah Barnes (see above). He married Dorothea Knottesford, the second daughter of John and Constance Knottesford in 1770. (She was his first cousin: his mother, Hannah, and her father, John, were sister and brother.) Thomas Barnes –the younger – having acquired the Holdfast estate after his marriage to Dorothea Knottesford sold the Barnes’ Queenhill Estate to Anthony Lechmere, the Lord of the Manor, in 1792. He died in 1821 aged 84. Their son was John Knottesford Barnes (baptised 1775). John Knottesford Barnes married Louisa Ann Herford (sic) daughter of John and Mary Herford at Foleshill in Warwickshire in 1803. John and Louisa Knottesford Barnes had only one child, also John Knottesford Barnes, who died aged 10 in 1816.
East window:
Edward Henry Montague Stone (1830 – 1891) was born at Margaretting in Essex, was educated at Rugby and Wadham College, Oxford and spent almost his entire ministry at Queenhill, first as curate of Ripple and then as Perpetual Curate of Queenhill. He lived with his wife and family at Holdfast Manor, by then, see below, in the ownership of the Dowdeswells.
On the south wall:
William Lewis Herford, A War Hero with a sad end:
Herford was baptised in 1777, the son of John and Mary Herford of Foleshill, near Coventry in Warwickshire. He was the elder brother, by ten years, of Louisa Ann Herford, who, as noted above, married John Knottesford Barnes of Holdfast Manor at St Lawrence Church, Foleshill in July 1803. He joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and saw service with them in some of the major engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. They particularly distinguished themselves at Albuera in 1811. Herford was among the wounded. It was a tribute to the surgeons that he recovered to play a part in the final years of the war. After his service in the army Herford settled in Italy where his son, Swen Ivan Andrea, was born in 1832. His will, made in 1839, records him as a resident of Genoa.
On his return to England, he lived in Cheltenham until he became ill – the jury at the Commission of Lunacy at Cheltenham in August 1845 returned a verdict that “Colonel William Lewis Herford is of unsound mind and incapable of managing his own affairs, and that he has been so since August last.” The case was brought by Colonel Herford’s brother John, on behalf of the Colonel’s son. Colonel Herford then went to live with his sister, and died at Holdfast later that year. His son followed him into the army, married and had a daughter.
[After the death of Louisa Knottesford Barnes in Cheltenham in 1852 there was no immediate heir to the estate. The claimant was John Ford and his solicitor had to go back through four generations of the Barnes Family to establish his claim in the Chancery Court: “Ford vs Clarke. At the conclusion of the case the estate was bought in 1857 by William Dowdeswell of Pull Court.]
Nicholas Barnes was one of the family at Barnes House, Queenhill: he appears twice in the Quarter Sessions Papers, for 1610 and 1611. His burial is recorded in the parish registers.
Sacred to the memory of
LIEU COLONEL WILLIAM LEWIS HERFORD, C B
23RD REGIMENT ROYAL WELSH FUSILEERS
who died 18th December 1845, aged 68 years.
He served the Egyption campaign in 1801, and carried the colours of the 23rd in the action on the landing. He was also present in the actions of the 13th and 21st march, accompanied the Regiment on the expedition to Copenhagen in 1807. And, at the siege and capture of Martinique in 1809, joined the army in the Peninsula in 1810, and was present at the pursuit of Massena. action of Redinha, capture of Campo Major and Olivença, siege of Badajoz, and Battle of Albuhera, where he received a rifle shot through the calf of the leg, and a musket ball in the right breast, which was extracted from the back having passed through the lungs. Rejoined the army in the Peninsula in 1813, and commanded the Regiment at the battles of Orthes and Toulouse.
If any aske who lyes within this tombe
Tell them that Nick Barnes hath taken up ye roome
Who godly dide & livd an honest life
& soe did prove to kindred frend and wife
His body rests his soule still daily singes
Glory & praise unto ye king of kinges.
OBIIT XV DIE DECEMBRIS
A DNI MDCXXIIII
Alabaster Slab probably formerly on the floor.
Henry Field of King’s Norton who died in 1584 commemorated here with his two wives, Anna, died 1572 and Sybilla, with her date blank. He bought the tithes of Queenhill in 1554, he also held the manor of Holdfast in the 1580s and on his death it passed to his niece and heir.
Above the west door:
William Tennant (born 1783, died 1835) owned and improved Little Aston Hall in Staffordshire, but he sold it in 1828 and moved to Brighton. His unmarried children rented Ham Court, the seat of the Martins, from the bachelor Major Joseph Martin, the then Lord of the Manor of Upton. It was whilst they were there that the eldest son, also William, died in 1848 and the hatchment was produced, originally for display outside the house. Soon afterwards the other three, who had made Ham Court their home, married. William’s younger brother, the second son, Charles Edmund, who was a naval officer, purchased Needwood House in 1849 and married in 1850. George Tennant married Mary Symonds, the daughter and heir of the owner of The Eades, near Upton, which became the home of Admiral Sir William Tennant (1890, died 1964) who is buried in Queenhill churchyard. Lucy married The Rev’d Alfred Kent from the locally important wine and spirit merchant family.
The Twentieth Century:
Joyce Mary Winnington was the widow of Lt Col. J. F. S. Winnington D.S.O. of the Worcestershire Regiment who had died of his wounds in Palestine on 22nd September, 1918. They had been living at Boughton Park in Worcester, but she and her two daughters moved first to Bowbrook in Peopleton and in 1932 to The Cottage at Newbridge Green. Mrs Winnington was very involved in all aspects of community life: not only was she a church warden, she was also a magistrate, member of the Upton Rural District Council, member of the County Council, school governor, pony club founder and holder of national, county and local office in the Women’s Institute with which, together with the W.R.V.S. she did important work during World War II – fruit canning, and mobile canteens in London, for instance. Winnington Gardens in Hanley Swan is named after her.
Frank H. P. Higgins: after education at Cambridge and ordination, and his first curacy, in London, he moved to Worcestershire. He held chaplaincies in Worcester – Berkeleys Hospital and the Union Workhouse. He served as a Chaplain to the Forces during World War I. He became an active Vicar of Queenhill with Holdfast in 1919, but continued to live in Worcester and to be the workhouse chaplain.
Lt.Col Evelyn Martin and Mrs Edith Martin. Col Martin (born 1847) was the step-brother of George Edward Martin, from 1873 the Lord of the Manor of Upton and owner of Ham Court. Col Evelyn and Mrs Martin, herself a member of the Upper Hall, Ledbury branch of the Martin family, lived at The Heath at Longdon Heath after injury caused his early retirement from the army. He died in 1904. She moved to Killiney, County Dublin, after World War I to be near her daughter, and died there in 1935.