Richard Herbert Jones
1908 – 1973
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About
Richard Herbert Jones, always Herbert, was born at Drombeg in 1908, the youngest of the last generation of Joneses to be raised there. In September 1970, long after the house and its fields had passed out of the family, he walked out to the Drombeg stone circle with a cup of tea and a knotted handkerchief on his head and was photographed sitting on the recumbent stone, the one the guidebooks call the altar. That photograph is the cover of this family's book and the reason it was written. He died in 1973.
Research notes
Son of Richard W. Jones & Alice Blanche White; aged 2 in the 1911 census. Brother of Alice Dorothy Jones (Aynsley's grandmother) and Henry Newport Edward Jones. THE DROMBEG PICNIC: photographed in September 1970 picnicking at the Drombeg stone circle (the "Druids' Altar") - the old family custom carried on even after Drombeg House and the circle itself had passed out of the family. Before the circle was acquired by the state it belonged to the Joneses - as recorded in Howard Goldbaum's "Voices from the Dawn" (Drombeg Stone Circle page, citing a 2004 account): "Before the stone circle was acquired by the state, Norman Damery's mother's family owned it... his family had always used the recumbent stone as a picnic table." The photograph documents the tradition in its last Jones generation.
Birth: Cork civil birth register 1908, No. 1 Rural district (Union of Cork), entry No. 21 (cert. 01652006), reg. 10 Oct 1908: Richard Herbert Jones, born 26 Aug 1908 at Thomond, Blackrock; son of Richard William Jones (Clerk) and Alice Blanche Jones formerly White; informant Alice B. Jones, mother, Thomond. Corrects the previously held "abt 1909".
Death: South Africa, Western Cape, Deceased Estate Files, 1951-2011 (FamilySearch, ark:/61903/1:1:68YX-326Z; FSID PZDP-C96): Richard Herbert Jones, b. 1908 Ireland, d. 17 Dec 1973 at Fish Hoek; wife Gwynhilda May Rowe Jones. He emigrated to South Africa. Name and 1908 Irish birth match his birth cert exactly. SUPERSEDES an earlier mis-attached Cork civil death (2 Sep 1972, "Richard Jones", retired caretaker, cert. 04038138) - that proved to be a different, unrelated man; do not re-attach.