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Max Matthews in June 2000 with the 1607 effigies of George and Anne Smith at Ashby Folville.
Welcome to almost everything you need to know about the sepulchral effigies of Leicestershire and RutlandThe navigation column on the left-hand side of every page provides links to the main pages and indices of this website. A Google 'search this site' box enables specific words to be located.
BackgroundMax Matthews started researching the effigies of Leicestershire and Rutland in the 1980s. In the mid-1990s I agreed to assist with photographing them all, although lack of spare time meant that this took over eight years to complete.Photographs are by myself except where credited otherwise. Most were taken on an Olympus OM-1N using Fuji 100 ASA colour transparency film, except for those taken in 2000 and 2001 when a Kodak DC265 digital camera was used. Slides were scanned using a Nikon Coolscan II. Images were digitally enhanced, where necessary, using Paint Shop Pro. Where I have subsequently revisited a church and taken better images (using a succession of Nikon DSLRs) I have substituted them for the images on the CD-ROM. Such updates are ongoing. Max prepared the initial version of a CD-ROM in 2001. In 2002 I reworked the 'look and feel' to match other Heart of Albion CD-ROMs. This web site is based on the CD-ROM created in 2002. Back then the code included the HTML v.1.0 tag FRAMESET. That worked well enough for off-line CD-ROMs. But search engines could not parse FRAMESET correctly and it wasn't needed once HTML 2.0 allowed DHTML. However it has taken me many years to find the time to convert the CD-ROM to static pages which are 'safe' for search engines. Apart from minor tyopgraphical corrections there are no changes to the descriptions of the effigies. So far as I am aware Max missed only one effigy – a late nineteenth century wall monument in Emmanuel Church, Loughborough. Since the CD-ROM was compiled and published an effigy has been installed in the Knights Templar Chapel at Rothley. Bob Trubshaw 2025 update: Max Matthews died June 2026.
AcknowledgementsPermission for reproduction of photographs of churches and effigies in the Diocese of Leicester was most kindly provided by Carole Law of the Diocesan office. Permission for reproduction of photographs of churches and effigies in Rutland was kindly granted by relevant clergy. Grateful thanks for their help and co-operation to relevant people at Belvoir Castle; Bradgate Park Trust; De Montfort University (Trinity Hospital Chapel); Leicestershire Museums, Arts and Records Service (Snibston/Donington le Heath); the National Trust (Staunton Harold); Simon Packe-Drury-Lowe (Prestwold) and Nevill Holt School. The assistance of Jess and Robin Jenkins is also greatly appreciated. Max Matthews 2001
Sepulchral Effigies of Leicestershire and Rutland
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