The mausoleum is built in brick with a low-pitched roof now protected with corrugated iron. The wooden cornice, door and windows are nicely detailed though some of the embellishments (visible in the earlier photograph) have now been lost.
Absolom Feavearyear
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Grade II (England and Wales)
1840
The plaque on the exterior of the mausoleum says "This Summer House was built in the year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Forty by ABSALOM FEAVEARYEAR Carpenter of this Parish in the Sixty Fourth year of His Age". But it is clear that the building was always intended to be more than a summer house for, in the centre of the floor, is a slab marked "Vault 1840", and against the back wall are three elaborately carved tombstones.
Local legend has it that Absalom Feavouryear (b.1777) had a violent disagreement with the parish priest during which he swore he would never enter the church again. “Oh yes you will” replied the parson “You’ll have to die sometime”. But Absolom was determined to have his way and, as a result, built himself a mausoleum on his own land where, when the time came, he was buried. It is much more likely, however, that the real reason for his not wishing to be buried in the churchyard was that he was a nonconformist.
The three tombstones inside the mausoleum are dedicated to Absalom, his wife and son. The last sentence of the inscription on the central one ,which belongs to Absalom, says “After a long and severe conflict with the World, the Flesh and the Devil, Died in hopes of a Joyfull Resurrection on the …” but the date of his death has never been added. Not surprisingly, perhaps, when it came to their turn, his wife and son preferred a more conventional burial in the parish churchyard.
Surprisingly good under the circumstances largely owing to the corrugated iron canopy that shelters the roof (2006).
Letter, Country Life, July 4 (1963), 30.
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Farm
Wingfield Green
Suffolk
IP21 5RE
England