Key to columns

COUNTY: The county in which the brass is to be found. This column is also used to denote the main groups of unlocated and foreign brasses in the Brooking Rowe Collection, grouped under the following letters:

a. Man and wife
b. Man in armour
c. Civilian
d. Ecclesiastics
e. Women
f. Foreign
g. Inscriptions
gh. Inscriptions and shields
h. heraldic
j. Canopies
k. Miscellaneous

PLACE: The place where the brass is to be found. Normally this is equivalent to the parish. In some places several churches and chapels have been grouped under the name of the town.

NAME: The name of the person represented. The spelling follows that in Hope's listings. The folllowing abbreviations may be found:

b. Brother
c. Child
d. Daughter
h. Husband
s. Son
sis. Sister
w. Wife

Where the individual is unidentified, a general description of the brass is given.

M.S.: Mills Stephenson. A list of monumental brasses in the British Isles (London: Headley, 1926). The number is that assigned in the catalogue to each brass within a church.
Ap: the brass is listed in the appendix
Ex: the brass is excluded from the list
De: the brass is a derelict
Mu: the brass is in a museum.

B.ROWE: Brooking Rowe Collection. The brasses are given sequential numbers within each county or within sections designated by a lower case letter for unlocated or foreign brasses (see County section above). With almost 1,000 rubbings, this is the largest collection in the Westcountry Studies Library. It was formed by the Plymouth antiquary Joshua Brooking Rowe (1837-1908) and was bequeathed by him to Exeter City Library, together with much other historical material, in 1908. The rubbings were mainly made from the 1850s to the 1880s by two or three different persons. They cover most counties in England, with a few from continental Europe.

MA.: Manning Collection. The bulk of the collection of some 250 brasses is in a vellum bound volume covering all parts of the British Isles with a few from the Westcountry and none from Devon. In 1846 the volume was in the possession of C.R.Manning (1825-99) of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, compiler of one of the first lists of brasses in the United Kingdon. There were many loose brasses in the book, probably intended to be pasted in. These have been removed and are indicated in this listing by numbers prefixed with an "s".

CO.: Copeland Collection. This collection of 138 Devon brasses was compiled by the Devon teacher and historian Gustave Wilfred Copeland (1893-1967) and was transferred in about 1985 from the Royal Albert Memorial Museum where they had been deposited in 1968 with the agreement of Copeland's widow.

SM.: Small Devonshire rubbings. A collection of details from 35 Devonshire brasses noted as a collection by Hope, when he made his listings.

ST.: Stone rubbings. A collection of 72 stone rubbings of Devon and Cornwall listed by Hope in 1970. The source is unclear although it may form part of the Brooking Rowe Collection.

OTHER: The only items in the present version of this list are from the small number of rubbings among the collection of historical materials received in 1933 from the estate of Hugh Wilson Holman of Topsham (1867-1931). An unidentified and fragile collection of details of rubbings arranged by subject on about 50 sheets may be conserved and listed in this section at a future date.

The Library is most grateful for the work undertaken by Andrew Guy in preparing this list on a database for its original publication in 1991.

Ian Maxted
County Local Studies Librarian
October 2001