A Lost Carved Cadaver Monument to a Member of the Norton Family at St Peter’s, Bristol

Abstract

The first English carved stone cadaver or transi monuments appear in the early 15th century. A subset were located on double-decker tombs, many still complete with biers displaying on the top level the recumbent effigy of the commemorated au vif and on the bottom level an effigy au mort. Forty-nine complete or partial carved transi effigies survive in England from the period to 1558, twenty-one of them part of double-decker monuments. To this corpus can now be added a lost carved double-decker example from St Peter’s church in Bristol, which was gutted by bombing in the Second World War. Old photographs, drawings and church notes establish that the person commemorated by the cadaver tomb was an armigerous member of the Norton family of upwardly mobile merchants who occupied the Great House by St Peter’s church. From 1435 they had an established tradition of burial within the church, with four generations buried here during the period when the double-decker tomb was likely to have been commissioned. Stylistic comparisons with other cadaver monuments suggest that the effigy formerly at St Peter’s church most likely commemorates Thomas I (d. 1435) or Thomas II (d. 1449), probably the latter. This is early for such a cutting-edge monument, especially to a layman.