The masons, from Dunedin, Gore and Invercargill, worked on the grave of Constance Davidson, the daughter of Gerald Birley’s great-great-grandmother, Sarah Ann Cobb Birley (nee Plummer).
Both women were signatories of the women’s suffrage petition in 1893.
In 1907, aged just 39, Mrs Davidson met an untimely death due to an accident involving a horse and, because she was a Catholic, her grave was positioned outside Glenorchy’s cemetery.
More than 100 years later, a horse, ironically, knocked over her headstone, breaking it in two.
While a helpful member of the public tried to repair the headstone, it fell again within a few years.
When the masons visited, only a small portion of her upturned headstone was visible, the rest having been buried in undergrowth.
After this portion was craned out, the lettering was re-leaded and the monument was fully restored inside the iron-fenced grave site.
Descendants of Mrs Davidson have reportedly said they were "over the moon" at the result.
On the same visit, her group also rescued several historic headstones in the Queenstown Cemetery that had tipped over on to adjacent monuments. — Mountain Scene
By Philip Chandler
