Monument to Sir Augustine Nicolls

The church of Faxton in Northamptonshire fell into disrepair during the 20th century, the hamlet of Faxton itself having long since disappeared. It was in a remote position, two miles north-east of Lamport. In 1958 the church was demolished, the monuments having been removed to the stables of Lamport Rectory. In 1965 the V&A agreed to accept the monuments in the stables as a gift. By then they were in poor condition, and a good deal of conservation work was undertaken by the Museum's Conservation Department.

People

Nicholas Stone (born about 1587, died 1647) was the most important English sculptor of the first half of the 17th century. He trained in The Netherlands, in the workshop of Hendrik de Keyser (1565-1621) in Amsterdam, from about 1607. He married de Keyser's daughter and returned to London in 1613. Although Stone was also active as an architect (he was appointed Master Mason and Architect at Windsor Castle, Berkshire, in 1626), he is best remembered for the fine marble and alabaster tombs he erected during the 1620s and 1630s. He appears to have stopped work with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642.

Alabaster

The carving of alabaster, mostly quarried in Tutbury and Chellaston near Nottingham, took on industrial proportions in England between the middle of the 14th and the early 16th centuries. The market for altarpieces and smaller devotional images was a large one. It included not only religious foundations but also the merchant classes. Many hundreds of English alabasters were exported, some as far afield as Iceland and Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.