Martyrs' Memorial

The monument was built 300 years after the events of the English Reformation and commemorates the Bishop of Worcester, Hugh Latimer, and Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley, who were burned nearby on 16 October 1555 after having been convicted for heresy because of their Protestant beliefs after a quick trial. It also commemorates the former archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, who was similarly executed (after having watched his colleagues' painful deaths while imprisoned in a nearby tower and the Vatican having permitted his degradation from holy orders in February) on 21 March 1556. The Rev. Charles Pourtales Golightly (a descendant of Huguenots who fled to England in that earlier era)…

Designed by George Gilbert Scott, the monument was completed in 1843 after two years' work, having replaced "a picturesque but tottering old house". The Victorian Gothic memorial, whose design dates from 1838, has been likened to the steeple of a cathedral, though it was consciously patterned on the Eleanor crosses erected by King Edward I between 1290 and 1294 to the memory of his wife, Queen Eleanor of Castile (1241–1290). Henry Weekes sculpted the three statues of Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley. The statues are carved from Caen stone while the monument itself is made of Magnesian limestone. The monument is listed at Grade II*. The inscription on the base of the Martyrs' Memorial reads:…