Si Monumentum Requiris

 Ever since my book* was launched on a startled world – four years ago now! – I have lived in mild dread that, on a church crawl somewhere, I'll come across a truly splendid 17th-century monument that I absolutely should have included in it. So far, this hasn't happened – or rather it hadn't until yesterday, when, on a pleasant sunny walk in Buckinghamshire countryside (surprisingly close to Milton Keynes), I was astonished to come across this very fine monument from the 1670s, which clearly belongs in my book (in the chapter winningly titled 'What Happened? (In which Much Ground is covered and the Author's Prejudices stand Revealed)'. A monument from this period is the last thing you'd expect to find in Bucks – let alone one of this quality. Standing in the chancel of St Simon and St Jude, Castlethorpe, it commemorates Sir Thomas Tyrrell, politician and judge (and Parliamentarian, but clearly his Puritan leanings did not extend to monumental masonry), and it shows him in his judge's robes. But, for all the grandeur of its framing, this is a tender and affecting composition, showing the grieving widow, with (delicately carved) tears visible in her eyes, cradling her dying husband as he rests his head in her lap. 
  Why did I know nothing of this one? Doing a bit of research when I got home, I found that it is indeed little known: Pevsner speaks well of it (and attributes it conjecturally to the London sculptor Jasper Latham; others have suggested William Stanton), but it has no mention in Mrs Esdaile, and only a fleeting reference in Brian Kemp's more compendious English Church Monuments. Neither is it featured in that wondrous volume Country Church Monuments, and I had never seen a photograph of it. 
It really should be better known, especially as it was recently restored and cleaned and is now looking its very best. Happening upon it so unexpectedly was yet another of those glorious surprises that make church crawling such an endlessly rewarding pursuit.

* The Mother of Beauty: On the Golden Age of Church Monuments, and Other Matters of Life and Death. Still available on Amazon, or direct from the author: email nigeandrew@gmail.com.