Winchester Walks

One of the things I enjoy most about leading guided tours is that I often end up learning something new from the people who come along.

On a recent tour of St Giles Hill, Richard Gedye asked me about the Titanic memorial in St Giles Hill Graveyard. I had no idea it was there, but after a bit of scrambling around, we eventually found it.

The memorial marks the Lucas family burial plot and commemorates, among others, two members of the family whose lives were touched by the fate of RMS Titanic, which sank in the North Atlantic on 15 April 1912.

Montague Mathias was a member of the ship’s crew and died in the disaster at the age of 28. His body was never recovered, so he is commemorated on the family memorial rather than buried there.

Also remembered is his brother-in-law, William Lucas. Unlike Montague, William survived the sinking and later gave evidence at the British inquiry into the disaster. Tragically, he died by suicide at the age of 35. We can never know what role, if any, his experiences aboard Titanic played in his later life, but surviving such a catastrophe must have been traumatic.

It’s a reminder that even in a familiar place like St Giles Hill Graveyard, there are still stories waiting to be discovered, and sometimes it takes a question from a visitor to uncover them.