‘BELOVED WIFE’

All Saints in Hollingbourne hosts the ledger stone of Cecilia Stede. She was “the most entirely beloved wife of Colonel Edwin Stede, His Majesty’s Lieutenant Governor of the Island of Barbados”.

She was also the daughter of Sir William Clark, a Royalist leader who was killed during the Civil War at the Battle of Cropredy Bridge in 1644.

Cecilia’s grandfather was Sir Thomas Culpeper the elder, who bought Leeds Castle in 1632; her mother was Mary Culpeper, who married William Clark in 1636.