Richard Harris Dalton Barham is buried in Dawlish, Devon. If you enter the cemetery by the main gates on Oak Hill his grave is in the first row on the left.
 

Grave of R.H. Barham (Photo © Angela Williams)

 

Barham retired to Dawlish from Lolworth, Cambridgeshire, in 1863, in search of a milder climate for his delicate health. He lived there until his death, pursuing his interest in geology and searching the cliffs and quarries for fossil Madrepores which he later donated to the town. He was born in Westwell, Kent, and was the son and biographer of Richard Harris Barham (1788 – 1845), the author of The Ingoldsby Legends. Educated at St Paul’s School and Oxford University he was presented with the living of Lolworth in 1836 and remained rector there for forty years, leaving the parish in the care of a curate after his move to Devon.

Some of his poems are said to have been written in Lolworth Rectory. As well as the ‘Life and Letters’ of his father (1870) he also published ‘The Life and Remains” of Theodore Hook (1849) and, under the name of Dalton Ingoldsby, a novel ‘The Rubber of Life’. The most famous of his verse tales is ‘The Temptation of St Anthony’, but he is better remembered in Dawlish for his poem ‘The Monk of Haldon: a Legend of South Devon’ - a comic horror yarn recounting the tale of an evil Friar who is reputed to haunt the ruin of the holy well and chapel at Lidwell:

(Text copyright Angela Williams)