Thurgarton
St Peter

Monuments and Memorials

Cooper family memorials

Five wall plaques to the Cooper family were moved to their present position above the north porch entrance in the 1850 restoration; they originally hung on the east wall of the church above the family vault which lay just to the left of the present pulpit. They are:

Top left
   In memory of John Gilbert Cooper Gardiner and his wife Catherine
Bottom left
   In memory of Dorothy Elizabeth Gilbert Cooper
Centre
   In memory of Susannah Gilbert Cooper and John Gilbert Cooper
Top right
   In memory of Susannah Wright Gilbert Cooper
Bottom right
   In memory of Henry Edward Gilbert Cooper

(The last two plaques were tributes from the Rev Daniel Lysons, the historian, who married Susannah Gilbert Cooper.)

Plaque to Richard Milward

This lies to the right of the Cooper plaques on the north wall.

He purchased Thurgarton Priory from the Cooper family in 1820 and died in 1844 leaving his estate to his nephew who adopted the Milward name.

This second Richard Milward restored the church in the 1850s, a fact recorded by a plaque at the east end of the north aisle which reads:

Richard Milward
Restored the Nave & Aisles of this Church in 1851 & put in the East Window in 1875. He died in 1879.
+ The Memory of the just is Blessed. +
Slab in chancel
floor

Grave slabs

The floor of the chancel and adjacent nave consists of large grave slabs resited during the Victorian restoration. The more recent ones are of wealthy village families of the 18th and early 19th centuries (Greens, Brettles). The early stones date from the priory; those with inscriptions of crosses would commemorate senior members of the Priory whereas a large black slab with multiple small shields of brass (now gone) was probably that of a secular worthy (see Archaeology for further details).