The Rowley Memorial

Wonderful photos by the sculptor and restorer James Elliott of the extraordinary late 19thC memorial in the chancel to members of the Rowley family. The following paragraph about the newly unveiled memorial appeared in the Guardian for 22 November 1893:

'A remarkable monument has lately been placed in the chancel of St. Neots church, Huntingdonshire, by Mr. Frederick Walters, architect, of Great Queen-street, Westminster; Mr. Earp, of Lambeth, whoso lamented death occurred a few weeks ago, being the sculptor. The tomb rises from the chancel floor nearly to the roof, a height of 27ft. A correspondent writes :— "It might, perhaps, be objected that there is too great an absence of horizontal lines in Mr. Walter's design, but to this it owes so much of it attraction that one is little inclined to question the judgment of an architect who has seized one of the chief elements of beauty in the French Gothic without being tempted to depart in the smallest detail of enrichment from the best originals of his own land." Tho monument is to the memory of Mr. and Mrs. Rowley, the recumbent alabaster figure of Mrs. Rowley resting upon a slab of black Belgian marble. Upon it Mr. Earp spent much of his time during the last two years of his declining health, and he had only just completed it when he died'.