This tour of five churches situated above and below the North Downs first visited St Mary’s West Horsley with a 14th century effigy to a de Berners priest, some 16th century brasses, two 17th century monuments to the Nicholas family (one probably by Gibbons), and an 18th century tablet by Nicholas Read, a pupil of Roubiliac.

From there they travelled south over the crest of the Downs to St Peter & St Paul’s at Albury (CCT) where the chief interest is the Drummond Chapel of the early 1840s, a fine example of A W N Pugin’s architecture and decoration combined with John Hardman’s brasses.

Then back up the Downs to All Saints Ockham, a church associated with the philosopher William of Ockham but possessing an early 18th century octagonal mausoleum as a setting for a Rysbrack masterpiece erected for Lord Chancellor King, now accompanied by monuments to King’s descendant Lord King, executed by Richard Westmacott Jun, and Lord Lovelace, almost certainly by his favourite architect C F A Yoysey, with lettering by Gill.

After lunch they visited St Mary’s Stoke D’Abernon, famed for its early brasses to Sir John d’Abernon (father and son) re-dated to the 14th century, but also containing other brasses and monuments to their descendants ending with a roman Ciborium containing the ashes of Edgar, Viscount D’Abernon (d.1941).

The final stop was at St Nicholas’s Great Bookham, with a large collection of brasses and monuments from the 13th to 19th centuries including a dual commemoration in brass and stone of Robert Shiers (1668), 18th century monuments by Thomas Carter and a fine military concoction to Cornet Geary, killed during the American War of Independence in 1776.

Here are Jean Wilson’s photos of monuments at West Horsley.

Photos of West Horsley