Memorial brasses

The county is notable for the range and number of medieval memorial brasses contained in its parish churches. These monuments, dating from the thirteenth century onwards, commemorate all classes of society, and contain an enormous amount of detail. Here are a few (very poor I’m afraid) images I have collected.



Above: a coat of arms, all that remains of a much larger memorial that has been “lost” (stolen, vandalized, thrown out by the Vicar) – notice the stars and stripes.



Above: if a brass has been lost you can sometimes find a “rubbing” of it taken in Victorian times. The British Library has a fine collection of these rubbings. This shows the famous Hastings brass at Elsing in Norfolk (actually this is a photograph of a postcard of a rubbing of a memorial brass).



Above: some churches still allow brass rubbing, but most have stopped the practice because of risk of damage to the monuments.



Above: brass of a medieval knight. Note the chain mail and flexible gauntlets. The indentation you can see would have held his coat of arms, probably stolen and sold into the antiques trade.



Above: this brass of a young knight gives a lot of information, and we can read that he was regarded as generous, faithful and loyal. The simple lozenge design on the coat of arms indicates his family was recently armigerous (otherwise we would expect to see quarterings). His helmet has a crest of ostrich plumes (rare in the 1630s).



Above: this is (to me) a mystery brass. It shows an ostensibly puritan family of 1620 – mother, father, seven sons and three daughters (the ones holding skulls would have died before the memorial was made). They are kneeling at a prayer desk with Bibles open before them. However, hovering over the prayer desk, and dominating the scene, are the arms of the Drapers Company, containing Marianist and Catholic imagery (the triple crowns are a symbol of the Pope). Presumably the father was a member of the Drapers Company, but the prominence given to the arms make me wonder whether a secret recusant message is being conveyed. It is as if the family is venerating the triple crowns.



Above: this couple seems to have had only one child which died in infancy. You can see that the christening robe has been used as the baby’s shroud. Such images as known as Chrysom children.



Above: indentation in a dark corner of a church, half hidden by mats and a curtain. Hundreds of these indentations indicate the wealth that has been lost. Occasionally (very occasionally) brasses are tracked down and returned to the churches they were taken from.



Above: Fr Jereme Bertram has written a very erudite analysis of “lost” medieval brasses, and how even the indentations can supply a lot of information. He used to be chaplain at one of the colleges of London University. Very civilised and knowledgeable.

Sometimes I ask myself why I allocate so much of my life to studying local history. It is as if I am driven to record, analyse and report on the way past societies organised themselves. It is as if I want to understand everything.