In the village of Cobham, in Kent, this parish church holds a unique treasure: the largest collection of monumental brasses in England. The mausoleum of the powerful Brooke family, barons Cobham, it offers, engraved in copper, a portrait of a whole dynasty across the Tudor centuries.
The country's greatest pavement of brasses
A monumental brass is an engraved copper plate, set into the floor, representing the deceased in effigy. Cobham has the richest series in England: the coppers of the choir range from 1298 to 1529, covering the whole passage from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The historian John Belcher wrote in 1905 that 'no church in the world possesses so splendid a series'. Several of these brasses represent members of the Cobham/Brooke family, several down to 1529 — a funerary gallery of a line across the generations.
The mausoleum of the barons Cobham
The church is the mausoleum of the Brookes, barons Cobham, a leading Tudor dynasty. At its heart stands the alabaster and marble tomb of George Brooke, 9th Lord Cobham (1497-1558), and of his wife Anne Bray, surrounded by the effigies of their many children. His son William Brooke, 10th Lord Cobham, was a leading Elizabethan courtier, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. Close by, the College of Cobham — a former religious foundation — was refounded by the Brookes as almshouses, a sign of the charitable reconversion of medieval institutions after the Reformation. To see: the pavement of monumental brasses of the choir (series 1298-1529), the Brooke tomb, the adjoining College of Cobham and the medieval architecture.
Did you know?
If Cobham keeps the most complete series of brasses in England, it is perhaps thanks to the cunning of its inhabitants: during the Civil War, fearing that the coppers would be torn out to be melted into munitions — the fate of so many other churches — they are said to have lifted and hidden the brasses. The fear of the cannon thus saved one of the finest funerary treasures of the realm.
Notes
St Mary Magdalene lies at Cobham, Kent; a working parish church, with the adjoining College of Cobham (almshouses). Access to check.
Quiz
- What does Cobham possess that is unique?
- The largest collection of monumental brasses in England
- The tallest spire in the country
- A hoard of jewels
- Of which family is the church the mausoleum?
- The Brookes, barons Cobham
- The Percys
- The Tudors
- How were the brasses said to be saved during the Civil War?
- Hidden by the inhabitants to avoid melting
- Walled up by the monks
- Carried off to France