Samuel Cheeseman
Samuel Cheeseman was said to be one of the originators of the Cross on the Hill, and led the digging operation that created the chalk landmark in 1920. He was devoted to Shoreham Church – employed as sexton (caretaker) for three decades from 1899 and serving as clerk to the Vestry, the church supervisory body. He also kept the churchyard and large vicarage garden in order, and was Tower Captain of the bellringers for 33 years.
He was born in the village in 1859, and by the start of the 20th century was living in a cottage next to the church lychgate with his wife, Minnie Maria, a daughter and three sons. He brought his family up to see themselves as “respectable”, had a close friendship with the vicar and kept cordial relations with Shoreham’s wealthiest families. His granddaughter, Rose Wootton, remembered him as a jovial figure, hauling her up on the church bell ropes as a little girl (until her mother put a stop to it).
In August 1917, his two younger sons – Richard and Cecil – were killed within days of each other on the Western Front. As clerk, Samuel would have written their names in the church register of the village dead. In the early months of 1920, as Shoreham debated what kind of war memorial would be best, it’s thought that he and the vicar, David Madge, dreamt up the idea of a giant Latin cross carved into the chalk below Meenfield Wood. Spade and pickaxe at hand, Cheeseman supervised the hard work of making the foundations, crushing up the fresh-cut chalk and then laying it down, in the company of numerous villagers after their other daily labours. They decided to double the size of the Cross midway through the work, before finishing it at the end of August or the start of September 1920. For several years afterwards, Cheeseman set off a small cannon at the memorial to mark the two-minute silence on Armistice Day. |
Minnie Maria died in 1925, and in 1932 Samuel left the village to be near his family in Erith. He died in August of that year, aged 73. His grave in the churchyard has always offered an excellent view of Shoreham’s Cross on the Hill.
Read more in Shoreham Historical Society Publication No 40, “The Cross on the Hill”, and No 34, “A Shoreham Childhood”
Text by James Saynor.
Text by James Saynor.