Norfolk's earliest identifiable tomb slabs

Image: © Evelyn Simak Taken: 1 Mar 2008

In > Image The church of St Peter & St Paul stands on an elevation in the village of Carbrooke (its 99 feet/30 metres high tower can be seen for many miles), adjacent to a pasture where the Carbrooke Commandery once stood Image; here the Knights Hospitallers collected alms for pilgrims to Jerusalem and the military duties that arose from their care and shelter. The church houses East Anglia's oldest identifiable coffin slabs, both bearing the cross marks of the Knights Templar, and presumed to mark the graves of Mathilda, the widow of Roger, Earl of Clare, who founded the Commandery in about 1193, and their son James > Image They date from the early 13th century. According to the church guide, the Latin inscription says: "Here lies buried a mother of the family of Clare by a soldier of which (family) England boasts herself renowned" and "A son rests interred at the right hand of his mother. Returning to his own birth he has sought this harbour"

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