Stonham Aspal (Suffolk)

Revd Anthony Wingfield III, buried 1714. Anthony Wingfield’s memorial seen from the south.

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13. STONHAM ASPAL (Suffolk). The unique, magnificent memorial of the Reverend Anthony Wingfield III of Broughton Hall (buried Nov.11, 1714) stands on the south side of the chancel of St. Mary & St. Lambert, 100 yards from the Wingfields’ beautiful Tudor moated ancestral home, Broughton Hall (1667-1762/4). Anthony’s effigy was sculpted by the famous Francis Bird (a pupil of the renowned Grinling Gibbons – renowned for his “Conversion of St. Paul” in the great pediment of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London). The elegant Anthony Wingfield is shown reclining Roman style, in full Georgian dress on a 6ft-high plinth. Sadly, in the 1960s the snake – an asp – that he was holding by the head – shades of Cleopatra! – disintegrated. One of Anthony’s three sisters, Elizabeth married (1725) John Dade, M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) of Ipswich. Anthony Wingfield III predeceased his father by ten years. The Stonham Aspal line is a cadet line of the Wingfields of Brantham (a cadet of Letheringham). Unless this magnificent Wingfield monument is renovated within the next few years, it will begin to disintegrate seriously.