Science & Heritage award spawns new research and assists new conservation campaign to preserve national heritage.
A successful bid by the Warkton Church PCC with the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust, for Heritage Lottery Funding towards the conservation of the Montagu monuments in the church, has been supported by research developed in the Representing Re-Formation project.
In the church of St Michael in Framlingham, Suffolk (where the sixteenth-century Howard monuments which are the project’s primary focus are located), there is also, on the south aisle wall of the chancel, a splendid monument by the French sculptor L.F. Roubiliac, the greatest sculptor to work in eighteenth-century England. A suggestion from Gareth Fitzpatrick MBE, Collections, Archives and Research Director of the Buccleuch Trust, during a conversation about Roubiliac, led Dr Lindley to examine the world-class Montagu monuments at Warkton, two of which (commemorating the second duke and duchess) are by Roubiliac. Another hint helped Dr Lindley make a series of remarkable archival discoveries relating to these monuments. These discoveries, which will be published shortly, informed the successful bid for Heritage Lottery Funding.
There are four monuments, the two by Roubiliac and later ones by Peter Mathias Van Gelder and by Thomas Campbell, all located in recesses in a purpose-built chancel, constructed from the summer of 1753. They will be conserved next year.
Mr Fitzpatrick noted that ‘this fortuitous interlocution between academic research and the holder of the Archives has been hugely advantageous to us in achieving the Heritage Lottery Fund support to develop the conservation project’. He added ‘it will be important in helping to prepare ways to engage new audiences into the understanding and appreciation of the heritage of this previously hidden gem from the Georgian era’.
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