APPLEBY. Meditating On Eternity.

06/06/14 APPLEBY. St. Lawrence's Church.

CUMBRIA. Appleby. Interior of the Church of St. Lawrence. The tomb of the heiress Lady Anne Clifford, daughter of Lady Mary Clifford. The tomb charts her ancestors and their coats of arms.

If you seek a little peace and quiet away from the hurly burley of Appleby’s annual Horse Fair, you may wish to visit the church of St. Lawrence which stands quietly behind a simple arcaded wall at the foot of the main street. One of the features you will find within the coolness of it’s walls is the tomb of Lady Anne Clifford, 1590 – 1676, where she lies in her eternal pomp as the Countess Dowager of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery and also the 14th Baron Clifford in her own right. Lady Anne was an individual of influence and character, though she was the only surviving child of her father George, 3rd Earl of Cumberland as a woman could not inherit her father’s earldom. Though it took her many years and two husbands, she successfully pursued a claim for the family estates and the right to the barony of Clifford. She spent her later years travelling her northern estates and restoring her neglected castles, one of which sits at the top of Appleby’s steeply rising main street, to something of their former glory after the ravages of the English Civil War.