The History House website has the story about the remarkable Brightlingsea Tiles. (Images reused under the Creative Commons Licence.)
Malcolm Woods has alerted me to these memorials to local fishermen and sailors who died at sea in All Saints Church, Brightlingsea. They include 213 memorial tiles placed in frieze that runs around the nave.
The local custom of placing the tiles on the church wall was begun by All Saints vicar Reverend Pertwee following a big storm in March 1883 in which 200 mariners from the counties bordering North Sea were lost, including 19 from Brightingsea.
Pertwee decided that a memorial tile should be made for each of his lost parishioners going back to 1872, when he first became vicar at the church. The first tile is dedicated to William Day and his son, David, who were drowned off Hartlepool.
The tiles were continued in later decades, and later tile memorials are to sailors killed in various storms, the loss of the Titanic and the World Wars.
I’ll make a point of taking a look when I get the chance – last time I was in the area the church was locked, as usual in a town.
Thanks Malcolm!
A lovely memorial. There’s a similar set of memorials to heroic self-sacrifice in Postman’s Park near St Paul’s started by GF Watts and Mary Watts in 1900. A good refuge from London’s hurly-burly but be prepared to shed a tear.
http://www.postmanspark.org.uk/