St Martin, Stamford II

   The interior of St Martin's is lofty and spacious; the architecture elegant and a little on the cool side.  Not an unusual thing with Perpendicular architecture, especially when it has been denuded of the original colour and furniture.  The original stained & painted glass, or what was left of it, was removed in 1704, but later however, in 1757-60, medieval glass, from Holy Trinity, Tattershall, was installed and set among geometric patterns of coloured glass by William Peckitt of York.  Most of the present furniture is Victorian, designed by Edward Browning. I wonder if he was responsible for the marvellous array of encaustic tiles in the chancel?  They're some of the best I've yet seen.

As I talked about in my previous post the north chancel chapel is the burial place of the Cecils, and has a splendid array of monuments and hatchments.  William Cecil's is perhaps the most famous, of alabaster it dates from 1598 and has been ascribed tentatively to Cornelius Cure.  Also attributed to Cure is the memorial to Richard Cecil and his wife of 1587; their three daughters kneel in prayer on the monument's plinth. Lastly the grandest of them all: the great Roman Baroque monument to 5th Earl of Exeter and his wife.  Carved, in Rome, by Pierre-Etienne Monnot (1657-1733) in 1700 and erected here in Stamford in 1704 by William Palmer.