This paper has highlighted a number of problems which affect good preservation of church monuments, but it should not be concluded from this that churches and their contents are in a state of crisis. Examples of bad practice have been cited, but so too have exemplars of sensitive re-ordering and conservation. It is hoped that the former will act as a warning and the latter as beacons of good practice worthy of emulation. A good deal of valuable conservation work is being carried out in churches across the country, driven by dedicated congregations willing to expend time and effort to raise funds for such work. Long may their efforts prosper.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Jon Bayliss, Paul Britton, David Carrington, Mark Downing, Brian and Moira Gittos, Maddy Gray,William Lack, the Revd Alexander McGregor, Anne McNair, Cameron Newham, Sally Strachey, Martin Stuchfield,Tim Sutton and Jeffrey West for help with information and illustrations.
Notes
1 J. H. Baker, ‘Funeral monuments and the heir’, The Irish Jurist, vol. 5 n.s. (1970), 391–405, at 398–99.
2 E. Gibson, Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani (2nd edn, 1761), vol. 1, 453–54. 3 http://www.churchcare.co.uk/images/Monuments_Symposium/The_law_
relating_to_monuments_in_churches_and_churchyards_-_Alex_ McGregor.pdf (accessed June 2013).
4 Ex info. Revd Alexander McGregor, Deputy Legal Advisor to the Archbishops’ Council and General Synod.
5 For an invaluable survey of cases, see D. Wilson, ‘Roubiliac, the earl of Pembroke and the Chancellor’s discretion: preservation of the nation’s heritage by the Consistory Courts of the Church of England’, Church Monuments, 21 (2006), 141–84.
6 www.churchcare.co.uk/images/sale_of_treasures.pdf (accessed June 2013). 7 Very full lists of extant brasses are contained in M. Stephenson, A List of
Monumental Brasses in the British Isles (London, 1926,Appendix 1938, repr. London,
1964) and are being updated in the County Series volumes by W. Lack, H. M. Stuchfield and P.Whittemore.
8 Ex info. Martin Stuchfield.
9 Ex info. Sally Strachey Conservation. 10 Ex info. Jon Bayliss.
11 S. Badham and P. Cockerham (eds), ‘The Beste and fairest of al Lincolnshire’: The
church of St Botolph’s, Boston, Lincolnshire, and its Medieval Monuments (Archaeopress,
Oxford, 2012).
12 Ex info. Brian and Moira Gittos. 13 Ex info. Martin Stuchfield. 14 Ex info. Martin Stuchfield. 15 Ex info. Martin Stuchfield. 16 Ex info. Maddy Gray.
17 The displaced brasses are now in the safe custody of the Norwich Museums Service.
18 Ex info. Brian and Moira Gittos.
19 J. Bayliss, ‘The monument of William, Lord Parr’, Church Monuments, 28 (2013), forthcoming.
20 Ex info. Martin Stuchfield. 21 Ex info. Mark Downing. 22 Ex info. Brian and Moira Gittos. 23 Ex info. Brian and Moira Gittos.
24 http://www.churchcare.co.uk/churches/conservation/caring-for-conservation- of-artworks-historic-furnishings (accessed June 2013).
25 http://www.churchcare.co.uk/images/ShrinkingtheFootprint/bats.pdf (accessed June 2013)
26 Ex info. Martin Stuchfield.
27 The debate can be found at http://tinyurl.com/mnv6w5y. Newly published research from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport can be found at www.batsandchurches.org.uk/latest-developments/. The final report on this research is expected to be submitted to Defra at the end of January 2014 and will be used to inform decisions on appropriate use of deterrents in churches to mitigate problems caused by bats. Guidance on the DCMS’s Places of Worship Grant Scheme, which can make grants in respect of the VAT incurred in cleaning and repairing damage caused by bats, as well as towards some of the measures which might re-locate them, is at www.lpwscheme.org.uk/background.htm. Current guidance from the Church of England can be found here: www.churchcare.co.uk/images/Shrinking theFootprint/bats.pdf.
IT WAS ON THE 26 November 1789 that John Elwes of Stoke- by-Clare, Suffolk died. He was seventy six years old and had spent the last twenty-six years as a notorious miser, keeping his annual expenditure down to £100 a year, which sum included the wages of his three servants. He ate frugally, spent hardly anything on clothes and reduced his home to a ramshackle ruin but he invested his money in building expensive town houses in St James’ and Marylebone. At the last, he was buried in the chancel of St Mary’s, Stoke-by-Clare beneath a plain black marble ledgerstone, with the following inscription:
JOHNELWESEƒq Died November 26th1789
Aged 76 Years.
A simple marker with the shortest of inscriptions, which reflects the frugality of his life, even though his estate was worth, in today’s figures, twenty million pounds.1
Ledgerstones can tell us much or, as with that commem- orating John Elwes, nothing at all about the individual buried in the brick grave beneath.They are fascinating genealogical records, but few people have ever taken time to study the floor of their parish church and read the inscriptions on the ledgerstones. Yet here is to be found a wealth of information on the leading families living in the parish between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their names, occupation and, if they had them, their armorial bearings. As a result of the 1857 Burial Act, and unless one happens to be a monarch, a Roman Catholic bishop, or a member of a long-established noble family with its own dynastic burial vault, there is little possibility of anyone being buried as corporeal remains within the confines of a church building today. But this was not the case between 1650 and 1850 when intramural burial was seen as the privilege of the middling sort, most of whose graves are marked by ledgerstones set into the floor (Fig. 1).
Whilst the decorative nature of mural monuments and memorial brasses has ensured their preservation, ledgerstones have generally lost out. As Dr Roger Bowdler observes: ‘Ledgerstones