A columbarium is an old-fashioned name for a dovecote with nesting holes but it has gained another meaning in ecclesiastical architecture. You will have seen columbaria on San Michele in Venice and in many Catholic cemeteries in Spain and Italy where space is limited. They are those chests of drawers where bodies are interred, not always eternally.
The practice originated in Phoenicia, a sophisticated mercantile civilisation that reached its zenith in the 9th century BC. While I am not completely ignorant about the Phoenicians I am not well-informed. In my school books they were elbowed aside by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.
Earlier this week I visited probably the finest columbarium in Britain, built in 1800. It has eighteen drawers and further bodies are interred under the aisle before it.
As you can see, each tomb has the name and dates of the occupant engraved on a brass tablet. A history of the church by Anne Sharpe records an instance of the filing system failing.
”During the early part of the Revd. John Greaves’s Curacy of the church, the lowest drawer nearest the gates had to be opened for repair. Permission having been obtained, the church-wardens were present among members of the family when the coffin was opened and a duchess was visible through the glass top, instead of the duke who had been named on the brass plaque, the embalmed body dressed in robes with a coronet. The sealing, which had failed, was made good and the lady’s mortal remains returned into place with an appropriate benediction.”
Being mentally agile you, correctly, infer this is a resting place for aristocrats. They are the Grenvilles. A kindly man in the church recognised my inadequacy as a photographer and took this picture of a document recording their names and more.
It’s not very easy to decipher so I will, with Anne Sharpe’s assistance, cherry-pick four of the best: three dukes and an English Prime Minister. We are not in Westminster Abbey; we are in All Saints’, Wotton Underwood in Buckinghamshire. The church was Norman and Wotton is registered in the Domesday Book, but there has been much restoration, especially in the 19th century. Sometimes dukes can have too much money. Externally it gives no clue to the exceptional funerary monuments within.
I’m not sure if it simplifies things or complicates them but the three dukes are all called Richard Grenville for short or, for long, Richard Temple-Nugent-Bridges-Chandos-Grenville, which would have made it hard to register his surname accurately on electronic forms these days. Richard I was born in 1776, married the daughter and heiress of Lord Chandos. He was created Duke of Buckingham and Chandos in 1822 and died in 1839.
Richard II, born 1797, was the only son of the first duke. Gratifyingly he became the Earl of Nugent in the Peerage of Ireland through his mother. He got in a muddle in 1847, amassing debts in excess of a million pounds and had to sell the contents of Stowe. It took forty days. He went to live abroad and died in 1861.
His son, Richard III, succeeded him and became Governor of Madras. He was responsible for much of the restoration of the church. He died with no male heir in 1889 and the dukedom died with him.
George Grenville 1712-1779, was Prime Minister from 1763 to 1765 and was responsible for the American Stamp Act by which American colonies had to pay for their own defence. This later led directly to the rebellion and War of Independence after Grenville had been replaced by Lord Rockingham. A longer serving Prime Minister now lives in Wotton Underwood: Tony Blair.
The windows, above, in the east and south walls of the Grenville Aisle were installed at the same time as the columbarium. They depict the armorial bearings of the Grenvilles and the families with whom they married.