Bamburgh (St Aiden Churchyard), Northumberland.
Monument to Grace Darling (1815-42).
Architect: Anthony Salvin; sculptor: C. R. Smith, 1846.
Stone effigy within stone and metal gothic canopy.

Grace Darling is shown lying alongside a coble oar in the churchyard at her birthplace on the Northumbrian coast. In its exposed position overlooking the North Sea, her monument's intricately-modelled canopy is eroding faster than funds can be amassed to preserve it. Part of the structure and the effigy have been replaced in at least one previous conservation campaign - the original effigy is inside the church.

The young Grace Darling attracted public adulation after rowing with her father, Keeper of the Longstone Lighthouse, to the paddle-steamer Forfarshire, wrecked in an autumn storm. The intense media attention that followed was acutely unsettling for a girl who had spent her childhood in the lighthouse on a rock in the North Sea. Five years later she succumbed to TB, and this substantial monument was raised in her honour by public subscription. The 21-ft rescue craft, a Northumberland fishing coble, is displayed with other mementos in the Grace Darling Museum at Bamburgh.

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Photos: Mark Pinder