Northleach parish church
Type:
Churches,
Grave markers
Date:
Fourteenth to sixteenth century
Location or Findspot (Modern-Day Country):
England
Description:
The town of Northleach was founded in the thirteenth century and became wealthy from the abundance of sheep in the English countryside. Local wool merchants linked buyers and sellers by shipping wool to France or selling it to Italian cloth manufacturers who came to Northleach from Florence, Venice, and Genoa. This lucrative trade enabled them to rebuild their wood parish church in stone in the fourteenth century. The merchants and their families were buried under the church floor, with their graves identified by flat metal memorials called brasses. These commemorative markers had been used by elite patrons in the thirteenth century, but in the following centuries prosperous mercantile families adopted this type of grave marker rather than such other options as relief effigies or incised slabs. The brasses were manufactured in London from raw materials imported from Europe. The ones at Northleach, many of which contain names and dates, span the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century.
Relevant Textbook Chapter(s):
10
Image Credits:
Linda Safran
