Smith family

Date of Brass:

1714-1805

Place:

Painswick

County:

Gloucestershire

Country:

Number:

II, IV, VIII, XII, XXII, LXXIII

Style:

Description

May 2026

Monumental brasses in churchyards are generally rare, but are common in one area of the Gloucestershire Cotswolds. They usually take the form of rectangular plates on gravestones but other shapes also occur, such as hearts, triangles and rectangles with a semi-circle protruding from the top edge (similar to the clock faces of grandfather clocks). This last shape can also be found elsewhere in the country inside churches, and is likely to represent a sideline of clockmakers like Robert Meller of Calver. He was the maker of a brass in this form at Stoney Middleton, Derbyshire, commemorating members of the Fynney family.

In Gloucestershire more substantial churchyard monuments may also feature brass plates. In 1714 Sarah, wife of the Painswick mercer Richard Smith, died probably in childbirth. She was buried in the churchyard of Painswick and a hexagonal stone monument erected. It has a brass plate in an arched stone frame on each face, but these are not of uniform size. Two are narrower, on opposite sides of the hexagon.

The monument was probably commissioned by Richard Smith. His own plate, wide like his wife’s, is on the left of hers. He died in 1727. Their daughter Ann, born in the year of her mother’s death, has the narrower plate to the right of her mother. She was the wife of Richard Butler and died in 1742. Her plate also commemorates her own daughter Mary, who died in 1753. Continuing anti-clockwise, next is the plate of Giles, son of Richard and Sarah Smith and elder brother of Ann, who died in 1735. Beyond is the plate of Ann, wife of Giles Smith, mercer, who died in 1720, and Ann, daughter of Samuel Smith, who died in 1721. Between this plate and that of Richard Smith, a narrower one remembers Richard Butler, the husband of Ann, who died in 1774, and his daughter Ann Little, who died in 1805 and was buried at Randwick.

All the plates, though weathered and corroded, are well engraved and have at the top a round-faced winged cherub with hair like that of a contemporary wig. These cherubs are evidently all from the same mould and were presumably produced when the memorial was first erected around 1715.

The earliest plate, to Sarah Smith, has a short Hebrew text engraved either side of the cherub’s head. It is also the most difficult to read, with florid italics except for her name and that of her husband in capitals. There are eight lines of funeral verse in lower-case lettering underneath. Richard Smith’s plate gives his details clearly, although the eight lines of verse in more shallowly-engraved Italics are harder to make out. That of his daughter Ann and granddaughter Mary is easy to read and so too is that of his son Giles. The plate for Ann wife of Giles Smith and Ann daughter of Samuel Smith reverts to the florid Italics of Sarah’s plate but is much easier to read than Sarah's. It has four lines of lower-case verse:

    Our mortal Stage is passt, our Lord is come

    and calld we hence to our eternal home.

    Doe thou thus Live, thus watch and pray to be

    In blissful Mansions Fixt with Christ and we.

Richard Butler’s details on his plate are easy to read. It is clear from the slightly different lettering of his daughter Ann Little’s details that they were added later.

The relationships between those commemorated on five of the six plates are clear, but the ages of those on the sixth suggest that Ann, wife of Giles Smith of this town mercer, was Richard Smith’s mother, and that Ann, daughter of Samuel Smith, was her granddaughter. Giles and Ann Smith’s indenture of settlement of 1707 led to the founding of the town’s charity school after Ann’s death. Richard Smith was also a party to this document. Giles died in 1707 and is buried under a tomb chest adjacent to the hexagonal pedestal with the six brass plates.

Copyright: Jon Bayliss (text and photographs)