Chapel and Monuments of the Shrewsbury Family

[RichardB]

From RichardB's, Gatty's Hunters Hallamshire

[dunsbyowl1867]

Is this report in Hunter's Hallamshire? Interesting anyway! Anyone been down there?

November 27 1809

The vault beneath the Shrewsbury Chapel in the Parish church explored by Mr Joseph Hunter, Mr VH Eyre and Mr John Greaves. "By eight or nine steps from the chancel, we decended to an upright door, which we found so decayed that it fell from its bolt and hinges on a slight force being applied to it. We were then admitted into a room about ten feet square and six feet in height, its stone roof supported by a rough hewn pillar rising in the centre. We found only two coffins lying on tressels (Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, 1616, and Henry Howard, Esq, 1787) Formerly more of the coffins were in sight: the other deposited here are probably walled up in that part of the vault which lies under the founders tomb'

[dunsbyowl1867]

An unusual feature of the Parish Church

The Shrewsbury Chapel

This chapel was the first substantial addition to the medieval church, built in 1520 by George Talbot, the Fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, as a family chapel with a burial vault below.

It houses two splendid Tudor monuments: one featuring George and his two wives, and against the south wall the other is for his grandson, the Sixth Earl, whose life was bound up with a number of formidable women.

He was married to Bess of Hardwick. He was in the service of Elizabeth 1st, and he was custodian of Mary Queen of Scots during her fourteen-year captivity in Sheffield.

A Talbot was a type of medieval hunting dog, and these feature on and around the monuments.

The Roman Catholic Dukes of Norfolk inherited the Shrewsbury estates and kept this chapel until 1933, a Roman Catholic chapel in an Anglican setting.

[History dude]

When the Shrewsbury monuments were being refurbished, I was chatting to a woman connected with the Cathedral. She told us that bodies of the Talbots are all missing and are no longer in the vaults :o