Amid the elaborate background of this fine tomb to Sir William Spencer and his wife is this little skull and gravedigger’s shovel. The tomb was designed by Jasper Hollemans from The Netherlands.
The skull is often used on monuments within our churches much as it is in Western painting. It suggests, therefore, the useless vanity of earthly things. The skull in painting is often used as an attribute of penitent saints, particularly St.Mary Magdalene, St.Paul and St Jerome. Hermits such as St Jerome are often depicted with a skull suggesting their contemplation of death and in turn their meditation upon eternal life.
It is therefore quite common in monuments both within the church and on graves outside to depict the nature of human existence with a skull, often a skull is places above crossed bones alluding to "And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit" (1 Corinthians 15:45)
YARNTON
St Bartholomew (From Thousand Best Churches)
Spencer tombs, ancient glass
Most churches speak a dominant language. Yarnton’s is Jacobean. Most of the building is Norman or Early English, but over its solid tower and warm stone walls hovers the spirit of the 17th century. Yarnton Manor was among the largest Jacobean houses in the county, now much reduced. Its gables and porch with fluted pilasters and obelisks serve as a backdrop to the churchyard, which is filled with battered tombs. By the gate is an old cross, at which travelling friars stopped to conduct services. Yarnton is a monument to the taste and generosity of an Oxfordshire village. The Spencers transformed the old church in 1611-16, erecting a tower, a porch and a chapel containing a mausoleum for themselves. The monument to Sir William Spencer (d.1609) is attributed to the Dutch carver, Jasper Hollemans, who worked for the Spencers at Great Brington
(Northants). It is a canopied tomb chest, rich, brash and vulgar, with strapwork filling every space. Yet there are affecting details, such as delicate veins on praying hands and winsome children in attendance round the base.The adjacent memorial to Sir Thomas Spencer (d.1684) is a shallow wall monument and a complete contrast. From the roast beef of old England we move to a Restoration fop. Sir Thomas’s hose is neatly rolled at the knee, his shoe is high-heeled, his hand rests effeminately on his hip. Son and wife look on adoring; four daughters are relegated as mere supporters. The representation of family groups was popular under Charles I, but was unusual in the reign of Charles II, who had no legitimate children. Light floods the chapel from high Perpendicular windows, enriching the red roof and spilling into the church through a splendid carved screen. In the middle of the chapel stands a wooden funeral bier, as if awaiting the arrival of yet more Spencers. Yarnton is full of treasures collected mostly on the Continent by a local benefactor, Alderman William Fletcher, in the late 18th century. The reredos consists of four 15th-century alabaster panels of the Nottingham school, showing Bible scenes, including a Pieta. Two of this set were taken from Yarnton in the 1860s, and are now in the Victoria and Albert and British Museums. A seventh has been lost. Fletcher also brought stained glass from Flanders and France. In the chancel windows is a set of quarries depicting guests uttering homilies at the funeral of Reynard the Fox, representing the Devil. They are excellent survivors of this once common art form.The church has admirable modern kneelers showing the pub, manor, farm, railway junction and even the electricity pylons.All Yarnton is under its knees. (Simon Jenkins)
Manor house, vicarage and church form a group. To the 13th-century church were added in 1611 an ashlar tower with mellifluous bells, a porch and a S.E. chapel by Sir Thomas Spencer, all late Perpendicular. In the church is much old woodwork in pews, a Jacobean screen to the Spencer chapel which has painted walls and roofs and grand 17th-century monuments. In chancel is alabaster 15th-century reredos and in aisle a medievalist brass of 1826, and in the windows fragments of old glass, English and Flemish.JB
