Headstone 169
~ Granite ~ Latin cross with four step base
- Charles Hugh Leycester 1847 – 16 May 1883
- Aged 36 years
- Husband of May Leycester
- ‘Drowned off Polperro’
- “When thou passest through the water, I will be with thee”
- Parish Records show
- Buried 11 June 1883
- of Looe Island
- May Leycester 1857 – 16 May 1883
- Aged 26 years
Ancestry research – shows Charles was born in Toft, Cheshire, into a wealthy and prosperous lineage. As a Royal Naval Sub Lieutenant Officer he worked, in the 1860’s, on ships travelling from Portsmouth to the Americas, notating official shipping information. In July 1882 he married Julia Mary Rawling, in Brighton. In 1881 the census shows him as Retired Sheep Farmer, aged 33 years old with his wife Mary (Julia’s second christian name) in Llangadock, Carmarthenshire. (Charles’s brother had also married, 8 years earlier, a bride called Julia, therefore there were two Mrs Julia Leycester’s). The headstone inscription names her as May.
Talland Parish Records – show in 1883 that C.H.Leycester had been renting Looe Island from a Mr Ezra Joseph Neale, a potato merchant working and living in Bristol (the Island was owned by Trelawny), for 4 years, when
Sadly, he was drowned on a fishing trip together with his wife and niece
Talland Parish Records
Probate records – show in 1883 a personal estate of over £5,400.
Talland Church Headstones 
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