Our unusual Object Highlight this week was chosen by Hannah our Museum Manager.
Grave stone on the stairs:
Is it Humphrey de Bohun I’s grave stone? It could well be, ornately decorated, the right period and situation that it was found within. These two tomb stones were discovered in 1902 by builders working on the Cooperative bakery in Court Street, now the Shires shopping centre. The grave stones date from the 11th-12th centuries. Later excavations of the site in 1977 and 1986-7 show this to be the site of a Saxon/Norman Churchyard with a church that pre-dates the Parish Church of St. James. Humphrey was an Anglo-Norman nobleman. The son of Humphrey de Bohun “With the Beard” , somewhat an odd nickname if you ask me, who was part of the Norman Conquest. He married Maud of Salisbury, a daughter of Edward of Salisbury, which is how he became the feudal Baron of Trowbridge.
The gravestone is a very tangible link to the past and from a period in Trowbridge from which not an awful lot remains.
