MONUMENTS IN THE NEWS

 

If you find any articles on, or related to, church monuments, be they informative, interesting, gruesome, amusing, silly or even down right wrong, in newspapers, magazines, radio, television etc, please send me information at churchmonumentssociety@aol.com
Please note that actual articles are often quoted as they were written and neither the style, content nor opinion are necessarily those of the Publicity Officer or Church Monuments Society. They will be kept on this page until the end of the year in which they appeared and then archived.
 

 
January 2010   BBC History Magazine                                       Huskisson Memorial
The Out & About section this month is about The Birth of the Railways. It features a short article about the accidental death of the M.P. William Huskisson  who was killed by a train on the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway at the former Parkside station, where there is a memorial plaque. There is a photograph of the Huskisson Memorial in St James Cemetery, Liverpool. The M.P. was buried at Chichester and there is further information about him on the Sussex pages.		  
   

LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGY, SUBMITTED FOR PUBLICATION, 12 OCTOBER 2009
I always enjoy Mick Aston’s articles in British Archaeology. Professor Aston is a man who walks the ground and frequently draws attention to little known features. The ‘bang’ and resulting crater at Fauld, included in his article on alabaster in your Nov/Dec issue (pp. 46-7), were unknown to me, although I have been interested in medieval alabaster products for some years. With some diffidence I offer one small correction. The alabaster military effigy at Hanbury is identified by Aston as ‘probably that of Sir John de Hanbury who died in 1303’. In an article in Church Monuments in 1991 (vol. VII, pp. 3-18) Dr Claude Blair concluded that this identification and date first appeared in the Methuen Little Guide to Staffordshire of 1910 and appears to be without any foundation.

Blair convincingly argued, on the basis of certain details of the armour and spurs, that the effigy dates to about 1340 and most probably commemorates Sir Henry de Hanbury who obtained a license to endow a chantry in Hanbury church in 1345. Blair noted that the effigy is identified as Sir Henry’s in William Burton’s (d. 1645) unpublished history of Fauld (British Library, Add. Ms 31917, f. 92). The later dating of the Hanbury effigy places the alabaster effigy of Edward II at Gloucester (c.1330, and mentioned by John Cannon in the article which follows in the same issue) more plausibly in the vanguard of using this material for monuments. Old ideas of the date and identity of monuments tend to acquire increased authority by frequent repetition and it is quite possible that the Hanbury effigy is still labelled with the old name and date in the church. Perhaps one of your readers can tell us.

Mick Aston also mentions the Gylbert panel at Youlgreave and your readers may also be interested to know that the panel was the subject on an article in Church Monuments in 2006 (vol. XXI).

 Philip Lankester, York

  
   
January 20th 2020  BBC Radio 4 Today Programme            Body of King Alfred's Grandaughter Discovered

There was a brief note in the programme about the following.		  
   
January 20th 2020  The Guardian  
The Guardian reports that a body believed to be that of Eadgyth ,daugher of the Wessex king Edward the Elder, was returned yesterday to Bristol for tests. She was the half sister of King Athelstan and was sent to Germany, together with her sister Adiva, to Otto, the future Holy Roman Emperor to seal an alliance. Otto chose Eadgth and her sister married another noble. She was born in 910 and had a least two children. Her body was found wrapped in silk inside a lead coffin which itself was inside a stone sarcophagus. Her monument in Magdeburg Cathedral, Germany, is much later and was believed to be empty until last year when it was opened. An inscription says she was reburied in 1510. Her bones had been moved at least once.  
   
January 29th Radio 4 The News Quiz  
Reported from the Frankston Times (no date) that there was a second hand tombstone for sale, standard gray, ideal for somone called Grayling.  
March 2010   BBC     History Magazine                                          Effigy of Countess of Worcester  
In the Breaking News section is a photograph, head and shoulders only, of the effigy of Elizabeth Browne, Countess of Worcester in St Mary's Priorr Church, Chepstow, Monmouthshire. The whole monument is also contains an effigy of her husband, the 2nd Earl. The article is about Anne Boleyn and not about the monument.  
June 17th 2010  The Guardian, Main Section; BBC Today Programme; BBC Radio 4 News
Update Princess Eadgyth
Futher to the article about Princess Eadgyth, it has now been confirmed that it is highly likely that the remains are those of this lady, although this can never be actually proved absolutely. It was not possible to extract DNA, carbon dating was unsatisfactory but chemical analysis of the tooth enamel  showed that the lady must have spent time in the Wessex uplands when she was a child when the tooth enamel was forming; this appears to be a specific marker. There is also a bird's eye photograph in the Guardian of the rather lovely effigy on her tomb.
If you are thinking of naming your daughter Eadgyth, it is pronouncec Edith.		  
   
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