History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

Recently, my friend Margery Gretton was walking in Paddington Old Cemetery and was intrigued by the unusual name of Ada Eliza Strange Bodycoat which she found on a grave.   The statue of an angel is on the main path from the gates in Willesden Lane, just before the chapels.  The side panels record Ada’s two children who are also buried here: Boyder Walter Charles, and Lady Gertrude Whaddia (in some accounts spelled as Wadia), who bought the grave for her mother. This is the complicated story behind the people in the grave. Ada’s early life and marriage Ada Eliza Hawkins was born in Marylebone in 1882, the daughter of a farrier and smith, who shoed horses. On 17 March 1901 in St Peter’s Church Paddington, she married William John Strange, a shoeing smith like her father. Their only child, Lucy Gertrude was born on 12 June 1901. When she started at Moberly School on the Harrow Road in 1910, the family were living nearby at 78 Chippenham Mews. Two years later, at the end of 1912,...