'She had not spun out thirty days': a rediscovered 17th century memorial to the newborn Anne Baynham at Holy Trinity, Minchinhampton

Anne Baynham's memorial following cleaning

A rare example of a 17th century effigial memorial to a newborn baby has been relocated at Holy Trinity church, Minchinhampton in the Cotswolds. The memorial was rediscovered high up in the north transept when the organ was removed for repair. Following fundraising by the Minchinhampton Local History Group the memorial has been cleaned and moved to a new position in the west end of the church by Mark Hancock of Centreline Architectural Sculpture, where it sits alongside a good collection of medieval and later memorials.

The memorial is now displayed in the church narthex

Urban Archaeology has been recording and researching the monument pro bono for MLHG and the church as part if its wider research into the church which was published as a new book by Hobnob Press last month.

The 18th century antiquarian Ralph Bigland recorded that the memorial was located in the chancel and that it included the Baynham arms (Frith 1990, 6523). When the nave, aisles and chancel were demolished by Thomas Foster in 1842 the memorial was re-erected high up in the north transept where it was soon obscured by the organ.

The monument was broken and clumsily repaired in 1842; to aid reconstruction the stones of the courses were numbered on the back from '3' through to '9', with courses '1' and '2' missing. Setting-out marks and rebates in the top of the memorial confirm there was an additional tier, presumably the Baynham arms of course no '2'.

Details of the reverse of the memorial showing location of setting-out lines, painted numbering and repair

The effigy is carved from English alabaster and bears traces of gilding and paint. It depicts a recumbent female infant whose proportions suggest an age of 2–3 years old but is dressed as an adult. She is wearing a plain coif with an ornately decorated cap over, a cloak, and a high-waisted nightdress with a finely gathered wide ruff. There are four strings of beads around her neck. Her right hand rests on a skull which sits on a cushion, and she holds a (now broken) palm leaf in her left hand. The girl is depicted largely immune to gravity, almost levitating within the cartouche, although the carving is lifelike especially in the arms and hands with their chubby fingers and there is considerable detail on the depiction of her clothes.

The effigy, carved from English alabaster

Anne was the fourth daughter of Joseph Baynham and Alice Freame. Alice was born and lived at nearby Lypiatt Manor then part of Stroud parish, and which lies across the Golden Valley from Minchinhampton. There are no other Baynham or Freame memorials in Holy Trinity.

Joseph and Alice were forty two years of age with three young daughters when they lost the newborn Anne. They lived at a time when child mortality was high, as was maternal mortality, and they would have personally known many families who had lost one or more children, or mothers in childbirth. Our modern sensibilities must be acknowledged when we look at Anne’s memorial, and whilst the desire to memorialise the death of any family member can be readily understood, the context of such desires and thoughts were potentially very different in the 17^th century.

The memorial to Anne, although not of the very first order, would have been an expensive item requiring payment to the church and to the mason and sculptor and for carriage and fixing. Careful thought would have accompanied the decision to commission the alabaster effigy which would have been ordered, carved and then shipped from its workshop and fitted into the Painswick Stone surround before being fixed in place on the north wall of the chancel. Decisions would have been made -by the family or the sculptor- about the representation of the deceased, and the exact iconography employed including the dress, the open eyes, palm frond and the skull memento mori.

It is intriguing that Anne is not portrayed as a newborn baby but as a toddler or young girl wearing the fashionable and high-class clothes of the time. In the medieval and Tudor periods babies and children were represented on memorials in a variety of ways and the family would have been aware of ‘weepers’ and of ‘chrysom’ representations of swaddled babies on memorials in the churches they attended. It used to be thought that chrysom effigies represented children who died within a month of their baptism and would be buried wearing their baptismal robe, but the effigies may also be a representation of an older infant (Oosterwijk 2000, 55–6). Many representations of swaddled infants are simple, however they could be more ornately carved: the alabaster memorial to Edmund Brudenell †1590 in Stonton Wyville, Leicestershire, includes a swaddled baby lying on a table beside the deceased (Lee and McKinley 1964).

Dr Sophie Oosterwijk has examined the representation of children in medieval and renaissance memorials, from the appearance of anonymous ‘weepers’ below and beside the main characters, and when the deceased infant is portrayed as older than their actual age at death. As well as being dynastic statements, Oosterwijk suggests that portraying a deceased male infant as an adult may be an attempt to idealise them at the ‘perfect age’ of Christ when he ascended to Heaven, whilst a female infant would be idealised at the age of the Virgin Mary at Annunciation, thought to be between twelve and fifteen (Oosterwijk 2010). Anne is of course not portrayed as a virginal teenage bride, but as an infant of high status.

‘Child monuments and the inclusion of offspring as weepers may indeed often have been inspired by dynastic considerations, but this does not preclude the idea of affection for children and heartfelt grief at their loss. It is true that there was a very real risk of death at a very early age, and parents were aware of this. However, it would be wrong to assume that children were neither loved nor remembered. Even the anonymous rows of offspring on monuments suggest that every child counted’ Oosterwijk 2010, 59

The portrayal as a toddler may also be due to the family’s imagining of Anne living on in the afterlife, and growing up to be as her three elder sisters, then aged six, five and three, and the elaborate dress including a cap as worn by a married woman may be used to indicate wealth and class. Anne’s portrayal as an older infant may also be linked to the religious belief that Anne was one of the 140,000 virgins of the Apocalypse, by the 16^th century the scope of the Holy Innocents or ‘first fruits’ had expanded to include all children who died before the age of seven. Dr JL Wilson lists several memorials that reference this belief although many of these are depicted as ‘not dead but sleepeth’ (Mark, v, 39) rather than open-eyed like Anne. The palm frond, held by Anne, is a sign of the Holy Innocents but Wilson states that this is most frequent in slightly older children, rather than the very young who were universally agreed to be included in the Holy Innocents (1990, 57–8). Roses were also used to depict virginity at this period, and it is possible Anne is holding a rose or a lily for purity, although the foliage looks more frond-like.

‘One of the commonplaces of the treatment of children in recent works has been that children were seen as intrinsically evil, needing correction to be saved. The evidence of tomb-sculpture brings this into question. There is no doubt in the imagery of these tombs that the children commemorated are, while inevitably mortal, saints. Both the rose and the palm symbolise their innocence; the palm triumphally, the rose with a softening consciousness of their earthly life. Their grieving parents are comforting themselves with a vision of their children as among the Holy Innocents’ Wilson 1990, 62

The left hand holds a broken palm frond

In light of this societal religious belief the epitaph is of interest, and compared to some similar monuments is relatively understated and matter of fact. The first half simply describes the parents and their lineage, the second part is about Anne but it does not dwell on her innocence, or her place in Heaven. God has simply taken her from pain to joy, but there is a simple admonition to the reader that we are all to die, and should therefore watch, pray, repent and forsake sin, but be happy when the day comes to join God for eternity. 

A comparator to the effigy is provided by the effigy of Thomas Hewer †1617 in Emneth, Norfolk, at the foot of a part of a larger canopied tomb to his parents. The alabaster effigy of young Thomas reclines asleep, his head rests on a pillow partially concealing a skull. Thomas’s hair is gilded, as is detail on the cushion. The Hewer memorial was by the sculptor Nicholas Stone and cost £95, of which only a small proportion would have been for the child’s effigy (Norfolk Churches).

Anne’s effigy is in bas relief rather than freestanding but also has great similarities to those of Lionel and Dorothe Allington (1638) in Bottisham, Cambridgeshire, where the two children recline (more realistically than Anne), and the elder child rests their hand on a skull on a cushion and holds a rose. The pose is almost identical.

There were accomplished sculptors producing high-quality effigial sculpture in the county at this period, the best known local sculptor of the early 17^th century is Samuel Baldwin, who is often described as being originally from ‘Stroud’ but was actually from Lypiatt, moving to Gloucester around 1620. Baldwin produced work of the finest quality for the most affluent and well connected families in the county and was their pre-eminent sculptor in the early 17^th century (Gray 1964).

Baldwin’s work would have been known to the Baynhams as he had earlier produced a monument to the pirate Henry Brydges (†1615) in the nearby Avening church, and of course his works at Gloucester cathedral, but also as he was a local Lypiatt man. Many fine works have been ascribed to Baldwin’s workshop, and there is no doubt that he was often first choice for the best families producing the very finest memorials.

Dr Adam White has kindly commented that the main inscription panel could well be from the workshop of Samuel Baldwin, with a similar panel on the monument to Giles Savage (†1631/2) and his family at Elmley Castle, although White cannot see a real comparison in the effigy with Baldwin's work which may have been provided by another workshop. Despite his importance and relative prominence as a sculptor the work of Samuel Baldwin is relatively undocumented and is in need of further research, the work of lesser regional workshops is even less well understood.

Detail of the inscription showing inlaid pigment

Further research is needed into the English funerary alabaster workshops of this period to establish whether this was a unique sculpture or was an established model, and whether a particular school or production centre can be suggested. The outer monument is typical of locally-produced work (perhaps by Baldwin’s workshop), whilst the effigy may be imported from out of county. The quality of the carving is good, but not of the very highest standard, it is however both detailed and well executed, with lifelike carving of the subject despite the ‘anti-gravitational’ posture and slight stiffness of some parts of the subject.

The memorial is included in the new book on Minchinhampton church, available from the church or from Hobnob Press.

Thanks to all at Minchinhampton Local History Group, Holy Trinity church, and to Mark Hancock and his team at Centreline Architectural Sculpture who carried out the move. Thanks also to Rev. Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, Dr Sophie Oosterwijk, Caroline Stanford, Alison Taylor, Dr Adam White, and Dr J L Wilson who generously provided additional examples of memorials to newborns and recommendations for reading which have all benefitted this article. The interpretation of their papers -and any mis-interpretation- is however all this authors!

 

Frith, B (ed) 1990 Ralph Bigland Historical, Monumental and Genealogical Collections relative to the County of Gloucester, Part Two: Daglingworth–Moreton Valence, Glos. Record Series 3

Gray, ID 1964 ‘A 'Forgotten Sculptor' of Stroud,’ Trans. Bris. & Glos. Arch. Soc. 83. 148–9

Lee, J M and McKinley, R A 1964 'Stonton Wyville', in A History of the County of Leicestershire: Volume 5, Gartree Hundred, London British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/leics/vol5/pp308-312 accessed 25 April 2025

Norfolk Churches http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/emneth/emneth.htm  accessed 29th April 2025

Oosterwijk, S 2000, ‘Chrysoms, shrouds and infants on English tomb monuments: a question of terminology?’ Church Monuments (Journal of the Church Monuments Society) 15, 44–64

Oosterwijk, S 2010 ‘Deceptive appearances: the presentation of children on medieval tombs’ Ecclesiology Today 43 December 45–60

Wilson, J 1990 ‘Holy Innocents; Some aspects of the Iconography of Children on English Renaissance Tombs’ Church Monuments 5, 57–63