It is said that the warmer channel temperatures brought Percy Florence Shelley to Bournemouth. In consideration of his wife’s health and his ailing mother he had bought a plot of land that was to become Boscombe Manor. By the time the manor was completed though his mother Mary was dead. Possibly one of the most famous female gothic authors was buried in a town that she may only have visited once. Alongside was her feminist mum, Mary Wollstonecraft, and her philosopher dad, William Godwin, both relocated from a cemetery in St Pancras and who probably had never visited the seaside town at all. Ironically given Bournemouth’s reputation for retirees it appears somewhat radical for the dead to move to the seaside town as well.
Three of the most recognised writers and/or thinkers of the 18th and early 19th century thus took up residence in St Peter’s Church in Boscombe. But apparently there was still something missing. When Percy Florence died in 1889 he was buried with him mum and grandparents. And joining them all the heart of one of the greatest lyric poets in the English language; his dad, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Having drowned off the coast of Italy in 1822 his body was washed up and then cremated on the beach near Viareggio. His heart though apparently would not burn and it was rescued from the flames and given to his wife Mary. She kept it, as did her son and it was deposited in to the grave when Percy Florence was interred.
It is tempting to come up with a comedic line and given that Shelley; his wife and his wife’s parents were free thinkers and some might say revolutionary, it is also ironic that they are forced to lay their bones and other organs in one of the most Conservative parts of the country. Perhaps spinning in their graves is about as humorous as it gets.
Jason Cridland
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