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Gustavus Nicolls’ Grave Identified In an article “Who Was Gustavus Nicolls?” that appeared in the last issue of Fife and Drum his date of death was included, but not where he was buried. This omission was set right recently when Anne Butcher, parish administrator for the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Fareham, Hampshire, England, wrote to say she’d found a memorial tablet to him and his wife set into the wall of their church hall built in the early 1970s. Strangely, the plaque seemed to have been part of some previous, larger structure, probably an above-ground tomb. The inscription begins with the word “Also” and sits within an almond-shaped field surrounded by hammer-picked stone, distinctly modern in feeling. The full inscription reads “Also to/The Memory of/ GENERAL GUSTAVUS NICOLLS/Colonel Commandant of the Corps of Royal Engineers/who was born October 24th 1779/and died at Southampton August 1st 1861/and of HERIOT FRANCES THOMSON/Relict of General Gustavus Nicolls/who was born October 21st 1782/and died at Southampton December 12th 1866/Here we have no abiding place but we seek for life to come/Heb XIII 14.” Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that the year of his death on Presumably, by the time heirs or executors got ’round to commissioning memories had dimmed slightly.
Memorial tablet to Gustavus Nicolls set into the wall of a building at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Fareham, England. Credit: Anne Butcher
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