Portfolio of Brasses
Each month we feature an article about a brass of particular interest.
If you would like to submit an article for this feature please contact:
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Lady Sydney Wynne
County: Denbighshire
Date: 1632
March 2009
In 1965 I was between jobs, and was re-training in Bangor to become a teacher. Wales is not rich in brasses, but when my closest friend from university days, Malcolm Norris, heard where I was going, he asked if I could try to get him rubbings of some of the half-dozen brasses at Llanrwst in what then was still Denbighshire. So we made that village our destination for a family outing. The sexton was friendly, but said I might find it difficult to rub the brasses as several were now mounted in wooden frames on the wall. Sure enough,...
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John Alnwik
County: Norfolk
Date: 1460
February 2009
February’s brass shows a figure in academic dress.
Surlingham is on the south bank of the River Yare, a few miles east of Norwich. It formerly had two churches. That dedicated to St Saviour was treated as a chapel even though it should have enjoyed full parish status. It was abandoned in the early eighteenth in favour of St Mary’s.
John Alnwik was nominated as vicar of St Mary’s by his kinsman, William Alnwik, bishop of Norwich from 1426 to 1436. John was a fellow of New College, Oxford, by 1426 and bursar of the college in 1427-8. He was presumably...
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Unknown civilian
County: Huntingdonshire
Date: c.1520
January 2009
January’s brass is one of many now anonymous memorials.
Not all brasses are large and magnificent memorials representing the rich and powerful. Many are relatively small and apparently insignificant but represent a cross section of middle-class England; the small trader, yeoman, craftsmen and so on. Sometimes even their identity does not remain in either the brass or in other records.
One such is this unknown civilian, now mounted on a block of Iroko wood and bolted to the North Wall of St Mary¹s Church, Godmanchester, Huntingdonshire. It is one of relatively few brasses remaining in the county of Cromwell.
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The...
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Margaret Bacon
County: Northamptonshire
Date: 1626/7
December 2008
December’s brass is one members saw during the excursion to the Nene Valley earlier this year.
The Bacon family is usually associated with East Anglia but a branch was established in Northamptonshire by Edward Bacon, who was descended from the Bacons of Hessett in Suffolk, in the early seventeenth century. Edward's eldest son, Thomas, was recorded in the heralds' visitation of Northamptonshire in 1618 as seventeen years old. Eight years later, he had a monument with a brass erected to his wife, who died on 29 January 1626 (or 1627 by modern reckoning). The brass is evidently of London manufacture,...
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Ann Tyrell
County: Suffolk
Date: 1638
November 2008
November’s brass combines a shrouded effigy with a long verse epitaph.
The practice of engraving the deceased in a burial shroud draws attention to the frailty of man. This sombre message is reinforced in the closing words of the inscription on this poignant brass commemorating Ann Tyrell (1638) at Stowmarket, Suffolk:
“And (by her early gravity, appearing
full ripe for God, by serving and by fearing)
to teach the old, to fixe on him their trust,
before their bodies shall returne to dust.”We only catch a glimpse of the face of Ann who died at the tender age...
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Reginald Spycer and wives
County: Gloucestershire
Date: 1442
October 2008
The Much Married Spycer of Cirencester: the brass of Reginald Spycer (d. 1442)
The parish church of St John the Baptist, Cirencester, contains a number of remarkable monumental brasses from the fifteenth century.1 Together with St Peter and St Paul, Northleach, and St James, Chipping Camden, Cirencester forms part of the ‘triumvirate’ of wool churches in the Cotswolds. The wealth of these churches is not only reflected in the magnificent architectural features but also in the extent of the funerary commemoration of the parishioners, in the form of brasses, within them.2
1. I am grateful to Martin Stuchfield, Rupert...
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Edmund Clere and his wife Elizabeth
County: Norfolk
Date: 1488
September 2008
September's brass commemorates a neighbour of the Paston family.
Stokesby is in the area known today as the Norfolk Broads. Nearby is Mautby, where Margaret Paston was buried in 1484 alongside her ancestors, and beyond Mautby are Caister and Ormesby. Ormesby was the seat of William Clere, Edmund’s grandfather. Edmund’s father Robert was a younger son, as was Edmund himself, but Edmund outlived his brothers, who died without heirs, and so inherited Stokesby from his father, who had been left it in his mother’s will. Edmund had a first cousin of the same name, a younger son of John, William...
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.John Bartelot and wife Joan de Stopham
County: Sussex
Date: 1428/9
August 2008
August's contribution is a brass that was engraved engraved c. 1467, c. 1630 and c. 1850.
The remarkable collection of brasses at Stopham, near Pulborough in Sussex, deserves a full and detailed account, but this one is offered as a sample of the difficulties in store when it comes to disentangling just when, why and by whom the Stopham brasses were made. The series of brasses to the ruling family runs from 1428 to 1977 (so far), although there was a period between the late seventeenth and mid nineteenth centuries when they were commemorated by inscribed marble tablets instead of...
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Thomas Cod
County: Kent
Date: 1465
July 2008
July’s brass usually resides in a hinged wooden frame on the east wall of the north aisle of the church of St Margaret of Antioch in Rochester, Kent. However it is not there at present as it is currently being conserved. The brass is palimpsest, i.e. it is engraved on both sides and the hinged frame allowed both sides to be viewed. Various vicissitudes overtook it in the nineteenth century and the metal is so thin that it can hardly support its own weight. As R..A..S. Macalister said when he spoke to the Society in 1891 (C.U.A.B.C. Transactions Vol.
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John Stonor
County: Buckinghamshire
Date: 1512
June 2008
The memorial brass to John Stonor now lies under the communion rail in the Church of at Andrew, at Wraysbury (Wyradisbury), in its cut down Purbeck stone. The brass “was formerly under the feet of the servants in the pew belonging to the lay rector”; its removal in the mid 19thC was “to prevent abrasion from pressure”. The church stands on a slight hill, only noticeable in time of flood, on the edge of the village of Wraysbury in the Thames valley opposite Runnymead. A bronze-age Causeway camp lies alongside the churchyard. Only half a mile from the river...
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William de Grey and his wives Mary and Grace
County: Norfolk
Date: 1495
May 2008
May's contribution is a brass that set an interesting precedent.
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Anyone reading this who is not a member of the MBS may not be aware of the excitement generated by a metal-detector find in the fields a short distance from Merton church in Norfolk a couple of years ago. Part of one of the scrolls that had been missing from a brass in the church for hundreds of years was unearthed and has now been set back into its indent. It was the first time that a find recorded under the Portable Antiquities Scheme had been linked to an...
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Jeha(n) Buccilier and his wife, Police
County: Meurthe-et-Moselle, 54
Date: 1494
April 2008
April's contribution is a French incised slab with some unusual imagery.
Part of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Toul (Meurthe-et-Moselle, 54) incorporates the 13th century buildings of the ‘Maison-Dieu’, a hospital traditionally founded by the bishop Saint Gérard towards the end of the 10th century. The ‘Salle des Malades’ has been converted into a ‘salle lapidaire’ containing a large number of sculpted figures, panels, epitaphs, fragments and other curiosities.
On the floor of this vaulted room are six incised slabs, quite likely in their original positions. Five of them are engraved with figures of the deceased and appear to have...
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Ann Fitch
County: Essex
Date: 1578 & 1593
March 2008
Anne Fitch, subject of March’s brass, is portrayed on two different brasses in the same church.
Anne Fitch was the daughter of John Wiseman of Felsted, a wealthy Roman Catholic landowner. Her first husband, William Fitch, lord of the manor of Little Canfield, died on 20 December 1578, aged 82, and was buried in Little Canfield church. His will provided for his burial in the chancel next to the burial place of his first wife, Elizabeth. His executors were to prepare ‘a convenient and fair marble stone engraved with my arms and the pictures of myself, my wife [sic] and...
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John Strensall
County: Lincolnshire
Date: 1408
February 2008
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February’s brass of the month is from St Botolph’s church, Boston, Lincolnshire. It now appears a somewhat anonymous figure. Of the inlay only the figure remains, although the cut-down slab shows that it originally had a canopy. There is no record of wording of the marginal inscription, which must have been stolen before Francis Thynne visited the church in c. 1605 and recorded such basses as then remained.
The brass has long been thought to commemorate John Strensall [variously also spelled Stransgill or Stranshale], who was rector of St Botolph’s from before 1378 to his death in 1408.
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A Lady, probably Agnes de Bradeston
County: Gloucestershire
Date: c. 1370
January 2008
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January's brass of the month is the earliest surviving brass in its county.
The brass of a lady, c. 1370, at Winterbourne is the oldest extant in Gloucestershire. It probably commemorates Agnes, second wife, and widow, of Thomas, Lord Bradeston, an important Gloucestershire landowner who died in 1360. Agnes’s natal family is not known. The brass is a good example of the work of London style ‘B’, austere and drawn with an economy of line. It shows Agnes’s figure under a single canopy with shields between the pinnacles and an inscription surrounding the whole. The canopy, shields and...
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William Armorer
County: Middlesex
Date: 1560
December 2007
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On the floor of the Northwest corner of the sanctuary of the church of All Hallows-by-the-Tower, close to the Tower of London, lies a smallish (58cm x 48cm) plate which is December’s Brass of the Month. It is dated 1560 and commemorates William Armorer, his wife Elizabeth, their three sons and two daughters. It is a Lytkott style brass using Script 8, and is not noted as being palimpsest, despite having been taken up from time to time as we shall see below.
The engraving of the figures is very light so that, except close-up (fig.2), they are...
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Edward Naylor
County: Lincolnshire
Date: 1632
November 2007
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November's brass of the month is illustrated from a century-old rubbing.
This brass is illustrated from a rubbing in a large portfolio that will be on its way to the Society's archive in Birmingham shortly. The portfolio was put together by Julia Warde-Aldam of Hooton Pagnell Hall in Yorkshire and mostly comprises rubbings made some years before World War I by Julia and other members of her family.
The only person named on the brass is Edward Naylor, rector of Bigby. His education and clerical career is summarized by Venn: he matriculated as a sizar at Corpus Christi...
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Christopher Daubeney
County: Norfolk
Date: 1593
October 2007
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October's brass of the month was made in 1593 at a time of crisis for the family commemorated.
Christopher Daubeney died in 1587 but it was not until 1593 that his wife Philippa put up this memorial. Rather strangely, the inscription refers to her father as Mr Roberts in the county Essex esquire. He was Thomas Roberts of Little Braxted, one of the auditors of the Exchequer to Henry VIII.
Although the inscription of his brass stresses his good name and fame as well as his ancient patrimony, Christopher Daubeney had been prepared to cut the odd corner...
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Unknown lady
County: Norfolk
Date: c.1415
September 2007
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September's brass of the month is now lost.
One of the problems with the study of brasses is that the student is working with a relatively small sample when compared with the number originally laid down. There is a considerable amount of material available on lost brasses through a number of sources.
1. Indents. These are the recessed hollows in church floors where brasses have been set. Even though the brass may have disappeared many years ago, much can be told from the shapes left
2. Manuscript sources. Many antiquarians, heraldic visitors and others made notes of what...
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John Byrkhed
County: Middlesex
Date: 1468
August 2007
August's brass of the month is, although damaged, of great interest.
Headless and lacking parts of its canopy and inscription, as well as all but one of its shields, the brass of John Byrkhed at St. Mary, Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex, is not immediately attractive. However, an investigation of the life of the person commemorated adds considerable interest to the brass. In his will, made on 24 July 1467 and proved on 5 October 1468, Byrkhede requested to be buried in the chancel, and his brass still lies there, in its original stone, though usually covered by a carpet. He appointed as...
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