Edvardvs Gibbon

I went over to the neighbouring village of Fletching this morning. Edward Gibbon - famous for writing the 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' - is interred in the Sheffield Mausoleum, hidden away behind a side door in the church. Gibbon died in 1794 aged 56 while visiting his friend, John Baker-Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield on his nearby estate.

The first line of the Latin inscription reads something like: 'A critical scholar endowed with a keen intellect and varied learning'.