This brass once covered the altar tomb of Roger Thompson.
[This] huge Flemish brass that formerly covered the altar tomb of Roger Thornton in the ancient Newcastle parish church of All Saints, Quayside, which closed for Anglican worship in 1959. It is believed to be the largest brass in the country.
It is pre-1429 and commemorates Roger who died in that year, his wife who predeceased him in 1411, and their seven sons and seven daughters. Roger Thornton was the ‘Dick Whittington’ of Newcastle, having arrived from the Cumberland area in a penurious state. He became a successful merchant in the town and was a great benefactor to St Nicholas’s and other churches and institutions. He was three times Mayor of Newcastle and several times Member of parliament.*
*From the Cathedral Church of St Nicholas guidebook.
And why did they remove it? It is strange how those who get the most elaborate tombs then end up getting them ripped apart and in some cases their remains displayed in a glass case like the Egyptian mummies I have seen. I do rather suspect that in a thousand years or so the wrinkled cadaver of Lady Diana will be on open display in a glass case somewhere. The sanctity of a grave seems to have an expiry date. Not that I really care, being irreligious, but it puzzles me how the religious can happily desecrate a grave after the passage of a mere few years of eternity. Anyway… nice photo
The people who are revered in life tend to be revered in death…
Whatever physical bit of them that remains is used politically or religiously as a means of control by hero worship…
The important part has long since departed, so it is irrelevant…
These things uplift the spirit.
I am very fond of Churches and Cathedrals they are so full of history