Holme
St Giles

Monuments and Memorials

Brass tablet, north aisle

In memory of John Randolph Marriott son of the Rev. Randolph Marriott and his wife Anne. He died at the age of fourteen on 6th March, 1812 from typhus fever.

North wall memorial tablet:

In Loving Memory of

HERBERT CHARLES KEY,

LANCE-CORPORAL ⅛TH SHERWOOD FORESTERS

KILLED IN ACTION IN NO MAN’S LAND
IN FRANCE.

SEPTEMBER 12TH 1917,

AGED 22 YEARS.

HE DIED THE NOBLEST DEATH A MAN MAY DIE

FIGHTING FOR GOD, AND RIGHT, AND LIBERTY,

AND SUCH A DEATH IS IMMORTALITY

The official entry says he was born in Holme and enlisted in Newark. He is listed in records as “killed in action in France/Flanders.” The 1/8th Sherwood Foresters were involved in 1916 in the Somme offensive and in 1917 near Ypres at Passchendale which was the most dreaded part of the line for soldiers. L/C Key was, therefore, involved in some of the worst trench warfare in the 1st World War, most probably going “over the top”. Grave markers on the north side of the church bear the “Key” family name, presumably parents and brother.

Within ten metres is the grave of another soldier, Arthur Deane, 305800, who, records show, enlisted like Herbert Key at Newark and was also a lance-corporal in the 1/8th Sherwood Foresters. He died of wounds two months after Herbert Key, also in France.

The Barton Tomb

John Barton, the Lancashire-born wool merchant who rebuilt Holme church around 1485, commissioned this tomb for himself and his wife during their lifetime. In his will (which is still in existence) dated 10th December 1490 he directs that his body is to be buried “in my new tomb in the chapel newly constructed by me in Holme”. The will also mentions his wife Isabella; his son Ralph and his wife Joan and their son and heir, John; his sons Thomas, Robert and Richard; his daughters Katherine and Isabella Tamworth, and his sisters Margaret Spencer and Marian. Ralph was directed to find a fit priest to celebrate mass for the salvation of his soul.

The recumbent figures lie above a corpse in a shroud as a ‘memento mori’; a reminder of what all must come to. On the sides of the tomb at the base is an inscription taken from the book of Job: ‘Miseremini mei miseremini mei saltem vos amicimei quia manus domini tetigit me’. (‘Pity me pity me you at least my friends for the hand of the Lord has touched me’).

He is clothed as a merchant of the fifteenth century, with his feet resting on a tun with a bar across it for ‘Barton’. He wears a cassock gown with a plain waist belt from which hangs his purse-pocket, decorated with five balls. On his right side, what appears to be the battered remains of his rosary can be seen.

Isabella wears a high-waisted dress with a tight bodice. Her belt is trimmed with squares and has a tongue decorated with Gothic leaves. Her headdress, a form of the ‘Butterfly’, comprises a gauze veil hung over wires worn over a linen skull cap. Her feet rest on a dog.

From the lined and firm character of John Barton’s face, it would appear that these figures are life-like representations and not idealised portraits.

During the church’s restoration in the 1930’s six blank shields around the base of the tomb were painted with heraldry copied from the Barton shields on the porch and during the same period other traditional decoration was added.

Grave slab, south side of the Lady Chapel

Here lie interred ye Body of John Belasys of Holme in the County of Nottingham, Esquire, And of Cathrine (sic) his wife. Catherine Dyed the 10th of March, 1716, and Mr. Belasyse the 10th of April, 1717. Requiescant in Pace.