A landmark illustrated history of rural church monuments - the forgotten national treasures of England and Wales Deep in the countryside, away from metropolitan abbeys and cathedrals, thousands of funerary monuments are hidden in parish churches. These artworks - medieval brasses and elegant marble effigies, stone tomb chests and grand mausoleums - are of great historical and cultural significance, but have, due to their relative inaccessibility, faded from accounts of our art history. Over twenty-five years, C. B. Newham FSA has visited and photographed more than eight thousand rural churches, cataloguing the monumental sculptures encountered on his quest. In Country Church Monuments, he presents 365 of the very best, each accompanied by detailed photographs, biographies of both the deceased and their sculptors and a wealth of contextual material. Many of these works commemorate famous historical figures, from scheming Tudor courtier Richard Rich to Victorian prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. But more moving are the countless others - minor aristocrats, small-time industrialists, much-loved mothers, fathers and children - who, if not for their memorials, would wholly be lost to time. As Newham blows the dust off these artworks and breathes life into the stories they tell, a new aesthetic history of rural England and Wales emerges. Country Church Monuments is a poignant record of the art we make at the borders of life and death, of our ceaseless human striving for eternity.

Excerpt from Notes on the Cathedrals The only royal monument is that to William of Hatfield son of Edward III who died in 1344. Other monuments or memorials (few of any architectural merit) are to: Thomas Haxey (1424) Treasurer of York, and benefactor to the Cathedral Sir William Gee the monument is a good example of the time; Frances Matthew (1629) wife of Arch bishop Matthew, daughter of Bishop Barlow of Chichester, and one of four sisters all of whom married bishops; William Wentworth (1695) Earl of Strafford, son of the great Earl. (of most of the early archbishops who were buried in the Minster there are no memorials. Tosti, brother of Harold, and the famous Hotspur were also buried in the Minster.) Other monuments are noted under 'historical Notes.' Some of the modern tombs are from designs by Sir Gilbert Scott. Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, and Sir John Lamplugh, who were beheaded at the same time as Arch bishop Scrope, were buried in the Cathedral, but where is not known. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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