
Anna Burnside
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Sold for £2,048 inc. premium
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Provenance
Graham Slater Collection
The arms are part of a series of heraldic shields to be fitted within groups of four quarter tiles. Newburgh represents the ancestral arms of the Earls of Warwick. Sets of these tiles were laid in the floor of the quire and in a sunken chantry and chapel within Great Malvern Priory. Another tile still in situ, known as the 'Leper's Tile', bears the date 1456 which is seventeen years after the deaths of both Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick and his wife Isabel Despenser. It is believed that the quire was rebuilt at that time partly as a memorial to them, with the chantry devoted to prayers for Richard, Isabel and their ancestors. The dates on the wall and floor tiles mean that they were in place prior to the consecration of the altars in 1460. Similar tiles form parts of tiled floors in a number of other churches, and it is possible the same design was also created in tile kilns in Monmouth and Bristol.