Pyramid shaped tomb in St Mary's church at Painswick in the Cotswolds
Painswick is quite often referred to as the Queen of the Cotswolds due to it's fine buildings of pale grey limestone. These are a reflection of the town's former prosperity during 300 years of activity in the cloth industry. St. Mary's church is largely of the 15th and 16th centuries but the spire was not added until 1632. The churchyard is famed for it's 99 yew trees which were planted around 1792. It is said that every time a hundredth tree is planted it dies. Painswick is a town that contains many notable houses built in the prosperous seventeenth century and has lots of little streets to explore and quaint shops to discover. As if the surreal spectacle of the yews was not enough, Painswick had some fine masons who created a large collection of box and pedestal tombs in the churchyard, many designed by a John Bryan, whose own tomb, dated 1785, is in the shape of a pyramid. The man was ahead of his time - the fashion for ancient Egypt did not really take hold until after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798.
Size: 5164px × 3422px
Location: New Street, Painswick,Stroud, Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom
Photo credit: © David Jones / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 99, bryan, church, cloth, cotswolds, egypt, england, folk, gloucestershire, john, law, mary, mill, odd, painswick, pyramid, shaped, st, strange, stroud, tomb, travel, trimmed, unusual, wool
