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Description
Winged angel on the west side of NA2, holding a heraldic shield. The figure has a frontal torso and a slightly raised and turned head. Its wings retain dark blue-grey painted feathers, and its hands support the lower sides of the shield.
Heraldry
Blazon: Quarterly: 1, Azure, three garbs Or [?]; 2, Barry of six Ermine and Gules [Hussey]; 3 and 4, substantially obscured by paint loss.
Plain English
A quartered shield combining several family coats. The upper-right quarter shows the distinctive red-and-ermine arms of Hussey; other quarters are considerably damaged.
Hungerford. The shield appears to display ancestral quarterings of the Hungerford family, one of the leading Wiltshire families of the fifteenth century. The red-and-ermine Hussey arms are particularly recognisable and entered Hungerford heraldry through an heiress. Walter, 1st Lord Hungerford (d. 1449), also incorporated inherited family emblems into his heraldry. Significantly, a Wiltshire antiquarian account published in 1855 specifically records Hungerford arms on the ceiling of an aisle in St Thomas’s and suggests that their presence commemorated a benefaction to the building.
Identification: RCHME: Two impaled coats i) Azure, a pallium or ii) in chief, Gules a fess or between four [not given] in base Argent, a cross engrailed gules, between four bougets sable for Thomas Bouchier, Archbishop of Canterbury 1454-6; Buckeridge: Quarterly Bourchier and Louvaine.
Tap for more details about the Bourchier family
Condition
The carving is substantially intact, including the head, torso, hands, wings and shield. Painted feather detail survives on both wings, although it is worn and chipped. The face, clothing and shield show extensive abrasion and flaking. Large areas of the design on the viewer’s left side of the shield have been lost, while the smaller divisions on the right remain clearer but are also incomplete.