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Husband’s ashes are lost as urn is stolen in robbery

Kirsty Elleray
26/ 6/2003

A WIDOW has made a desperate appeal after thieves stole an urn from her garden containing the ashes of her dead husband.

Sheila Wainwright-Hamlin, who lives at Ford Lodge on Ford Lane, put her husband's ashes in the urn after he died from a heart attack a year ago. The 74-year-old, who had also planned to have her own ashes put into the urn after her own death, said: "I can't believe it has gone, it is not the urn that is so important it is because of Trevor's ashes in it that I am so angry.

"Trevor really cared for this lodge and it was supposed to be a memorial, it is so infuriating it has gone."

The heavy turquoise coloured urn is about four feet by three feet, with ram's horns for the handles and is worth up to £500.

Sheila, a former nursery school teacher, said: " I feel so angry, I want them back.

"Trevor was the guardian of the lodge, the trustee and the curator, that is why the urn was important, it had a tribute written to him on the back and the ground near it had been consecrated just after he died."

Trevor, who was a director of Quicks of Ford in Manchester, died in June, 2002, aged 74. She added: "Every time I passed the urn I thought of him."

The pair had been childhood sweethearts but Sheila married an army officer and didn't marry Trevor until over 20 years later.

She said: "We met up after all that time in Fletcher Moss Gardens and the years just filled in, and the magic was still there, he had not changed.

"We were married for 23 years and lived here all that time. We did all the gardens and the work at the lodge to make it look how it does today. He would be disgusted at this."