Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/355

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OF ACTON BURNELL.
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dows are single trefoil-headed lights, but placed in ranges: for instance the south side of the chancel has four which answer with an arcade in the interior, on shafts with trefoil heads. All the mouldings are Early English. On the north side are three similar windows. The font is richly moulded; it has eight convex sides, which have trefoliated arches, resting upon clustered shafts. A corbel-table composed of grotesque heads and brackets alternately, runs round the whole of the building, and imparts to it a characteristic degree of elegance. The capping of the buttresses is curvilinear. There have been north and south chancel doors, and there is a fine double piscina in the usual place. The arches of both transepts rest upon richly decorated corbels, about a yard from the floor.

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Brass of Nicholas Burnell.

In the south transept is a fine monumental arch with a piscina. The opposite one, which has also had its altar, is much encumbered with monuments. That to Sir Richard Lee and his wife in 1591, occupies the place of the altar. The church contains a great number of encaustic tiles, whose patterns would indicate them to be coeval with the building.

There is one monument that calls for a more detailed ac- count. It is the sepulchral brass of Nicholas Lord Burnell, that rests on a low tomb on the northern side of this transept. I have already mentioned that after the decease of the probable founder of this beautiful church, his great possessions went in succession to Philip and Edward Burnell. Maud, the sister of the latter, by her two marriages, conveyed away much of the inheritance, and Nicholas Burnell, who was her second son by