A SIDMOUTH LOVE STORY

Sometimes the inscription on a tombstone seems to want to tell a story, the composer of the text being, as it were, an author pushed for space.  On a  horizontal slab of granite in Salcombe Regis churchyard  can, with difficulty, the inscription will soon be illegible, be read the following:

Sacred to the memory of

CHARLES SATTERTHWAITE

of Lancaster

who departed this life

at Sidmouth

?  ?  1815

Aged 26 (?) Years

and of Frances Nannette Sheridan

the daughter of

Charles Francis Sheridan

The Secretary of War in Ireland

14(?)  October  1816

Aged 27 years

Surviving her Husband 

Only one Year 

She returned to Sidmouth

for the purpose of being laid

in the same Ground.

They were married in Cheltenham on 14th December 1809.    They were young and wealthy.  He was of Rigmaiden Hall in Westmorland.  His father was John Satterthwaite , a prosperous West India merchant, 

of Castle Park, Lancaster.  She was the eldest daughter of Charles Francis Sheridan, a colourful character with a distinguished literary wife.  Frances Nanette was, moreover , a niece of  the great and famous Richard Brinsley Sheridan, playwright and politician.  I think I have read somewhere that she too was devoted to the stage.  There was a boy born  to them in 1810 and another in 1812.  Charles and Frances must have seemed an enviable couple but they were both to die tragically young.    

The story that their churchyard tomb tells is surely a love story.   They came to Sidmouth in 1815, probably for the sake of Charles' health.  I like to think that they loved the place.   Salcombe Regis must have held some special significance for them;  Charles was buried there.  A year later Frances Nanette, knowing that she was dying, made the journey to Sidmouth  to see the town again and to lie at her husband's side.