George Wareing was born to David Wareing and Mary Winter 17 November 1780. At the time they were living in Duke St, Lincoln’s Inn, London.  The street had a distinctive arch at its northern end which provided access to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and was renamed Sardinia Street during the late nineteenth century.

Mary Durden was born to Henry and Mary Durden, in West Drayton, Middlesex (far West London), and baptised on 18 March 1786.

They married on 7 September 1806 at St George the Martyr (Anglican) Church, Queen Square, Holborn, in the London Borough of Camden and are my great great great great grandparents.

They had two children in London – my great great great grandfather James (1807-1857) and Mary (1810-1880).

George was a tailor by trade and this may have required him to shift the young family to Birmingham, where they lived at 30 Paradise St, and were to have eleven more children – William (1812-1870), Henry (1814-1893), Lucy (1816-1898), Anne (1818-1897), Eliza (1820-1873), John (1822-1868), Teresa (1824-1892), Juliana (1826-1866), Barbara (1828-1829), George Edward (1830-1856) and Anthony David (1832-1869).

With so many children paradise was obviously over and consequently they shifted to New St. There the family both lived and ran their tailoring shop.

On 24 March 1844 George Wareing had a stroke and collapsed while at Sunday Mass at St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham.  He was removed to the Bishop’s house next door and a surgeon/doctor bled him from his jugular veins. Not surprisingly he died that very day.

George was very highly considered by the church and they mounted a brass plaque in his memory.

This was to acknowledge the work he had done for the St Chad’s parish, and because the building was only a couple of years old Mary also commissioned a memorial window.

Mary Durden died on 27 February 1869.  The crypt of the Cathedral contains a number of chantry chapels and vaults, including one in which is dedicated to George and Mary Wareing.  It is there that their bodies were laid to rest as is James, their son and my great great great grandfather.