These are bits of the tomb belonging to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk (1425-1485), who had a rather decadent set-up at Thetford Priory. Unfortunately for him, the monastery was dissolved in 1540 and despite the pleadings of numerous nobles, the church and tomb were destroyed in 1547. I’ve been to the remains of Thetford Priory a few times, but it seems that I have failed to take a photo of where the tomb once stood. I’ll pop back at some point….
Some praise to AI here, I asked it to bring the statue back to life with the angel that might once have been here. AI thinks that it was a monk and not an angel, and I think it might well be right. Once again, I rather like what AI has done here.
The grieving family, who remained Catholic, decided to create a new tomb at St Mary-at-Lambeth, but this was recklessly destroyed by the Victorians when they decided to rebuild the church. In turn, that church was nearly demolished in the 1970s when it became redundant, but fortunately, that at least has been saved.
I understand that these bits of the tomb were recovered in the 1930s, although I can’t find the items in the collections of either Norfolk Museum Service or the British Museum to be able to discover more about that.
There was certainly some decorative effort made with this tomb, which must have been of a substantial size. I really rather like that these bits have survived as if the story had been different and the church not demolished, then it’s likely that the tomb would still be there today. I wonder what the work crew tasked with smashing up the tomb would have thought…..