GEOFF Brambles considers the story behind the marble hopping of the tombstones of members of three prominent Kendal families.

THE Parrs, Bellinghams and Stricklands were important people in late Mediaeval and Tudor Kendal. For them, only the best would do, in death no less than in life.

It is no surprise then, that their tombs in Kendal Parish Church are topped with marble.

But it is not the marble of popular imagination, for it is neither the pure white of Michelangelo's statues, nor the riot of colour that adorns so many country house fireplaces.

On the contrary, it is a sombre dark brown, so unshowy that it almost vanishes into the shadows.

Why was this stone chosen? The answer lies in those most unyielding of tyrants, tradition and fashion.

Throughout the Middle Ages and on into the mid-seventeenth century, dark marble enjoyed a lengthy vogue among those wealthy enough to be able to afford it for their commemoration.

The super-rich could use the very pricey Purbeck marble, or the jet-black marble from Tournai, in modern Belgium, perhaps even pricier. What we see in the three Kendal tombs is neither of these, but a competition from northern England.

It is only in recent years that research has established its provenance as the rocky banks of the River Tees just east of Egglestone, near Barnard Castle, County Durham.

Close inspection of the stone reveals an abundance of tiny fossils - fragments of crinoids and it is the size distribution of these, combined with the character of the stone that entombs them, that can be matched with the rock outcrops beside the Tees.

In its day, Egglestone marble was prestigious enough to be used in Durham and Carlisle cathedrals and it has so far been identified in 40 churches across the north of England.

In Kendal we have a bonus - the bowl of the font in the parish church is also Egglestone marble, and there are two further tomb slabs that readers might like to locate for themselves.

There is though, a twist in this story. Geologically speaking, Egglestone, Prubeck and Tournai marbles are not marbles at all.

They are dark limestones, of a type that enjoyed a later surge in popularity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The best known local example is the black variety of Dent marble.

Why, then, are these stones called 'marble?'

In the stone trade the word came to be used for any rock that took a polish, a practice that pre-dates any scientific understanding of how rocks are formed, and which continues to this day.

So our three knightly Kendalians were not short-changed and they can continue their rest secure in the knowledge that they lie beneath slabs of marble.

Geoff Brambles

Kendal