Of rubble and remains: the Harvey sarcophagus, Hempstead, Essex

Of rubble and remains: the Harvey sarcophagus, Hempstead, Essex

Month:	July 2025
Type:	Combination wall monument and chest tomb
Era:	19th Century

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St Andrew's, Hempstead
Church Rd, Hempstead, Saffron Walden CB10 2PA

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The collapse of the church tower led to a happy outcome for the remains of the great scientist Sir William Harvey

On Saturday 28 January 1882, “one of the finest and most lofty village towers in Essex” collapsed. The tower belonged to St Andrew’s Church, Hempstead, and its collapse led to the creation of a monument for a great scientist.

The scientist was Sir William Harvey (1578-1657), who provided the first complete description of the circulation of blood. He followed two innovative principles: “to illustrate man by the structure of animals”, and to “discover the function and offices of the heart’s movement…through the use of my own eyes instead of through the books and writings of others.”

He dissected and observed everything from snakes, blackbirds and thrushes to deer shot at Windsor Park and a 153 year-old man from Shropshire. Even his wife’s pet parrot suffered an autopsy. These investigations gave him new insights into how the cardiovascular system worked, expressed most famously in his book De Motu Cordis (On the Movement of the Blood) (1628).

Among his prestigious roles, he was physician in charge at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and physician to both King James I and Charles I. Most importantly for Hempstead church, he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1607.

His astute brother Eliab managed Harvey’s finances, so Harvey accumulated wealth throughout his life. He spent much of it on the Royal College of Physicians, where he built a library and a museum. When he died in 1657, he bequeathed his estate at Burmarsh in Kent to the College.

By this time, his brother Eliab had bought Wincelow Hall at Hempstead in Essex, 40 miles north-east of London. He built a family chapel in St Andrew’s Church, and a vault underneath where the Harvey family would be interred.

Such was the esteem in which Harvey was held by the Royal College, that the President of the College and a procession of the fellows accompanied his body beyond the city walls of London on its journey to Essex. Some even made the three-day journey to Hempstead.

Harvey was encased in a lead sarcophagus like a mummy’s, which had a plaque bearing his name on the chest, and a crude face moulded on the head. He was placed like this in the family vault. A wall monument sculpted by Edward Marshall (1598–1675) was installed in the north wall of the church, with a bust of Harvey at its centre. At this stage, it was the only monument for Harvey in the church.

Here the story pauses for 200 years, until 1859, when reports reached the Royal College that Harvey’s sarcophagus was in a shocking state. The College sent two of its fellows to investigate. They reported that the sarcophagus was cracked and lying under a window exposed to the rain, and so was at least a third full of water.

The Royal College asked the descendants of the Harvey family if the College could repair the sarcophagus, and move it away from the window. The family refused, and claimed they would do the “necessary repairs” themselves.

However, the “necessary repairs” were not a success, as Dr Benjamin Ward Richardson discovered. Richardson was a fellow of the College, who had long campaigned for a more majestic resting place for Harvey. In 1878 he visited the vault again, and this time took a small mirror and a magnesium light, to see if the remains of Harvey had survived their perennial submersion.

When he started his inspection, a frog leapt out of a crack in the sarcophagus. Richardson reported to The Lancet that the crack “is positively filled with a thick, dirty fluid…having a peculiar organic odour.” He doubted that even bones remained. Despite Richardson’s alarums, no action was taken by the College, and it looked like Harvey would remain in his semi-aquatic condition.

Then in January 1882 the church tower collapsed, bringing much of the nave with it. Richardson hastened to the church, and to his relief found the Harvey vault was unharmed. He galvanised the Royal College into action, and they agreed to fund a stone sarcophagus at St Andrew’s, above ground in the Harvey family chapel.

They commissioned G Maile & Son of Euston to create the monument, which was hewn from a single block of Sicilian marble, and weighed between four and a half and five tons. Given this massive weight, the College had to strengthen the roof of the Harvey vault beneath the chapel. A tapered plinth for the sarcophagus also needed to be laid, so it could sit level on the sloping floor.

The Royal College paid for the cheapest, plainest version of the sarcophagus. A discreet flower is carved in the corners of each side, and “G Maile & Son” inscribed in the north-east corner of the fillet on the top slab. On the west side is inscribed “THE REMAINS OF WILLIAM HARVEY/DISCOVERER OF THE CIRCULATION OF BLOOD, WERE REVERENTIALLY PLACED IN THIS SARCOPHAGUS, BY/THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF LONDON,/IN THE YEAR 1883”. On the south side, facing the chancel, an inscription reads: “WILLIAM HARVEY/BORN 1578-DIED 1657.”

The re-interment ceremony took place on 18 October 1883, when a special train carried the President and fellows of the Royal College from St Pancras to Saffron Walden (the nearest station to Hempstead). Two of the invitees didn’t appear: the Bishop of Colchester because he went to Liverpool Street Station instead of St Pancras, and so missed the train, and Canon JW Leigh, who was to conduct the service. He was an anti-vivisectionist, and since Harvey had worked on animals, he felt obliged to decline the ceremony.

At 4pm members of the College (including Richardson) ceremoniously carried Harvey from the vault, past the rubble of the church tower, and laid him on a bier by the new sarcophagus. The service was conducted, and Harvey was placed in the sarcophagus, together with a copy of his works and a sealed glass bottle. The bottle contained a parchment scroll on which was written an account of the day’s proceedings, and the events that had led up to them.

The monument is now a place of pilgrimage. It has a visitors’ book lying on the top of it with names from people around the world, including many medical students.

So the sudden collapse of the tower led to a happy end to Harvey’s re-interment saga, but it began another saga: the rebuilding of the tower. Despite money from the William Harvey Memorial Fund and Harveian Society of London, the tower was not completed until 1962. It was dedicated by the Bishop of Colchester, who happily this time turned up.

Church Monuments Society