Kingston St Mary lies just two miles north of Taunton, and was the parish church at which John Kidner of Dodhill (1838-1926) and his family would worship after his move to Dodhill in 1905. John's daughter Amy Elizabeth Kidner ("Betty" to friends and family) lived at Dodhill until her death in 1946. If anyone in the local district remembers the Kidner name it is likely to be because of Betty, who ran the Scouts for many years. Here she is in, I guess, about 1920 (are there any clues to the exact date?), seated in the centre in her Scouts uniform:
John and Emily Kidner moved in 1905 to Dodhill House, Kingston St Mary, from Heywood Farm, Nynehead where their seven children had been born, and John and Emily are buried at Kingston. The family plot was remodelled in the 1960s, and only two stones remain. These commemorate John and Emily themselves, Beatrice (1881-1916); Margaret (1882-1914), who married Leslie Queripel but died in Quetta, India just a few months after her marriage in 1914; and Fred (1886-1915) who died in France and whose letters home from the front to Betty can be read at Appendix 82). The second stone commemorates Frederick John Kidner who died in 1935 aged 19 when his motorcycle hit an unlit and unmarked roadwork. The Kidner memorials are shown in the photograph below at bottom right.
|
Peter Kidner standing alongside the memorial to his grandparents, John and Emily Kidner, and the memorial to his elder brother, Frederick John. |
 |
 |
 |
The reverse of the stone is hard to read through the shrub, but records Beatrice Mary Kidner, Margaret Queripel nee Kidner and Frederick Elworthy Kidner - three of the children of John and Emily Kidner of Dodhill |
 |
The memorial to Frederick John Kidner (1916-1935) includes lines from Robert Louis Stevenson's In Memoriam F.A.S.: Here, a boy, he dwelt through
all the singing season |
