The final resting place of Anna Maria – the elder daughter of Olaudah Equiano – has been rediscovered in the St Andrew’s churchyard. The words on the memorial plaque to Anna Maria on the north wall of the church always indicated that she ‘lies beside this humble stone’. However, the precise location of her grave has not been confirmed until now.

Professor Victoria Avery (Keeper of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Co-Curator of Black Atlantic and Lead Curator of Rise Up) and Dawnanna Kreeger (independent researcher) have undertaken extensive research into Equiano’s Cambridgeshire Family. As part of their ongoing work, Avery recently came across a long-forgotten A-level history project written nearly 50 years ago by a teenage pupil, Cathy O’Neill, of St Mary’s School, Cambridge. O’Neill had visited St Andrew’s in the 1970s and taken a photograph of a grave marker she speculated might be Anna Maria’s. It was assumed that the marker had been subsequently removed with changes to the churchyard path. However, with the help of Philip Lockley, they managed to re-locate the stone illustrated in O’Neill’s 1977 photo, and correctly decipher its very worn inscription. Its small scale and brief inscription confirm it to be the original footstone (rather than headstone). The stone marks a grave exactly in-line with the memorial plaque to the north of the church – so very much hidden in plain sight. The proposed new stained-glass window commemorating the Equiano will also be located parallel to the grave.

A moment for commemoration to mark the rediscovery of Anna Maria Vassa’s grave will be held in St Andrew’s Churchyard, Chesterton, on Saturday 18 October, 12 noon. All welcome.