A Winchester Mason and the Early Renaissance Style in the 1520s: The Chapel and Tomb of Sir John and Mary Lisle at Thruxton Church, Hampshire

Architectural settings of the early Tudor period, executed in terracotta and adorned with Renaissance ornament, have long attracted the interest of architectural historians. The surviving examples at Sutton Place in Surrey and Layer Marney in Essex are well known, as is the series of terracotta tombs across East Anglia, which date from the 1520s and likewise include Renaissance detail. A group of contemporary funerary monuments in Hampshire, that also exhibits Renaissance detail, has been largely overlooked by scholars. These monuments can be associated with the Renaissance work in Winchester Cathedral, and in particular with the well-known presbytery screens. The group includes the remains of a chapel at Thruxton, with a tomb chest for Sir John and Mary Lisle, built between 1524 and 1527. The Lisle chapel was demolished in the 1790s to provide material for the refurbishment of the church tower. An important series of Renaissance carvings were set into the tower at this time (Fig. 1). Long overlooked by scholars, their original position in the Lisle chapel will be reconstructed in this essay.