If like me you’re enraptured by the historic weird and wonderful then a book to hit the shelves in time for the Christmas list is C.B. Newham’s Country Church Monuments. Having catalogued and visited over 900 parish churches in England and Wales the results have been published in a fine volume.

Near to me is the fantastical and extraordinary tomb created in 1668 to the first Lord Poulett. A truly unbelievable structure that pushes English High Baroque to the limit. A taste of it is illustrated here taken when I last got the chance to visit it up close and personal, though a friendly word with the churchwarden always does the trick.

So armed with this new guide I shall be preparing to visit plenty of churches in the future and marvel not just at these memorials but also the buildings in which they are housed.