The burial vault of a well-known 18th Century Watford family of Baptists has been unearthed by contractors on the central car park site in Beechen Grove.

Inside the bricked-up tomb they found four disintegrating lead-lined coffins containing the “definable skeletons” of local benefactor David Salter, his wife and two daughters. Name plaques place the date of the burials in the early 1800s.

Workmen excavating the site of Watford’s new £10m shopping and social centre discovered the vault last week.

Site manager Mr Eric Lawrance told the Watford Observer: “A digging machine struck something fairly hard and uncovered the top of a cavern.

“We broke into the top and discovered there were signs of coffins inside. There were four – all in a pretty bad state, but it was possible to take out the remains and remove the plaques.”

Town hall officials believe the vault was part of the graveyard attached to nearby Beechen Grove Baptist Church. In 1963 the council were granted a private Act of Parliament to remove the remains so that roadworks could be carried out. The remains were reinterred at Vicarage Road cemetery.

Mr David Riddle, solicitor co-ordinator in the town clerk’s department, commented: “We assume the Salter vault was missed because it is at a lower level to the rest of the burial ground.

“The remains have been taken from the site by undertakers, who are keeping them until we can arrange re-burial. The plaques will be handed over to the Baptist Church.”

Some of the wording on the plaques is difficult to read, Mr Lawrance said. One states: “David Salter, died January 18.” The year of death is unreadable but records show he died in January 1848. Another plaque shows his wife, Sarah, died on March 18, 1801, aged 38.

The plaque on the coffin of one daughter states: “Born and died August 9, 1799.” The second girl died on February 18, 1838, aged 39.

Said Mr Lawrance: “There is a bit of a mystery about this. The 1799 is not very clear but if it is correct, the baby could have been the twin sister of the girl who died in 1838.”

David Salter, a deacon of Beechen Grove Church, set up a trust for four almshouses in October 1843 – five years before he died.

The original Salter’s almshouses were in the High Street near Watford Field Road.

These have now been demolished and the trustees administer eight flatlets in Burton Avenue and Queens’s Road.

[From the Watford Observer of March 8, 1974]

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