Last weekend, on what was almost certainly going to be the last warm and sunny day of the summer, I visited Salisbury for the first time and, inevitably, homed in on the magnificent Cathedral.

Although I have no family links at all to Wiltshire (at least, so far as I yet know), in the midst of all the impressive tombs of ‘the great and the good’, a very modest floor-slab caught my eye.

“Here Lyeth ye Body of Mary the Daughter of Arthur Evans Gent. & Catherine his Wife Who Died Sept. ye 29^th Anno Dom~ 1737 Aged Six Weeks.”

I haven’t been able to find online a baptism for Mary but her burial on 1 October 1737 is on FindMyPast, in the series ‘Wiltshire Burials Index’ recorded by the Wiltshire FHS. Wondering why a very short-lived child was given the honour of burial in the Cathedral, I investigated further and was able to find the marriage of her parents (again thanks to the recording done by Wiltshire FHS and by the Wiltshire OPC) on the 6 November 1731 at Hinton Parva (also known as Little Hinton), about 40 miles north of Salisbury. Arthur Evans was from the parish of Rodborne Cheney and his bride, Catherine Coker, is described as being the daughter of the Officiating Minister, Thomas Coker.

Thomas Coker was Rector of St. Swithun’s Church, Hinton Parva, Wiltshire, from 1684-1741. His patron had been Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury from 1689 to 1715. Although his patron was no longer Bishop by the time Mary died, Thomas’s own high-standing amongst the local clergy must surely have been the reason why his baby granddaughter was granted a burial within the Cathedral.

In contrast to baby Mary’s stone memorial, one of the many impressive tombs in the Cathedral that I found particularly attractive is that of Robert, 2^nd Lord Hungerford (1409-1459) who served in the Hundred Years War. He has the pudding-basin haircut fashionable at the time and the details of the buckles and decoration on his robes are very fine. I particularly like the little dog on which Robert’s feet gently rest for eternity.