On the north side of the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin parish church is the grave of Oswald Gardner. He was a railwayman on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, killed in an accident on 15 August 1840. His workmates paid for his gravestone and included an inscription comparing his demise to one of the locomotives he had driven.
ERECTED At the expense of the Workmen of the Newcastle & Carlisle Railway To the Memory of OSWALD GARDNER LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEMAN WHO UNFORTUNATELY LOST HIS LIFE IN THE ABOVE RAILWAY NEAR THE STOKESFIELD STATION FROM THE CONNECTING ROD OF THE ENGINE BREAKING ON SATURDAY THE 15TH DAY OF AUGST 1840. HE WAS 27 YEARS OF AGE AND WAS MUCH ESTEEMED BY HIS FELLOW WORKMEN AND ALL WHO HAD THE PLEASURE OF HIS ACQUAINTANCE. The following epitaph was composed by an unknowing friend to commemorate his worthiness And left at Blaydon Station. _________________________________________ My engine now is cold and still, No water does my boiler fill; My coke affords its flame no more, My days of usefulness are o'er. My wheels deny their noted speed, No more my guiding hand they heed. My whistle too, has lost its tone, Its shrill and thrilling sounds are gone. My valves are now thrown open wide; My flanges all refuse to guide. My clacks, also, tho’ once so strong, Refuse their aid in the busy throng. No more I feel each urging breath, My steam is now condensed in death. Life's railway's o'er, each station's past, In death I'm stopped, and rest at last. Farewell dear friends, and cease to weep; In Christ I'm safe, in Him I sleep. |
There is a very similar inscription in Bromsgrove Cemetery, Birmingham, to Thomas Scaife, an engineer killed in a boiler explosion on the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway on 10 November 1840. There is also a similar inscription in Montreal, to Alonzo Dixon, killed in 1860. There is more about these related inscriptions by S.S. Worthen in Canadian Rail magazine 1966, see http://www.exporail.org/can_rail/Canadian%20Rail_no182_1966.pdf. The Whickham inscription is the earliest by a couple of months, but all three may be based on a poem, now lost.