Mausoleum of Mrs Perkins

This morning I had to go into Christchurch town centre to buy a birthday card for a friends daughter. As I'd paid for car parking I thought I may as well have a little walk around the priory grounds while I was there.

I've walked through these grounds many times and never really paid much attention to this structure within the gardens. After taking this photograph today I took the time to actually read the plaque.

This is the Mausoleum of Mrs Perkins, a lady who died in 1783, but had a horror of being buried alive. She requested that her body should not be interred, but that a fabric should be erected to receive it near the entrance to the free school then in St. Michael's Loft of the Priory. So that the boys should hear if she revived, she also requested that the lid of the coffin should not be screwed down, and the lock of the mausoleum constructed so as to enable her to open it in the spring. These wishes were carried out, but when her husband died in 1803 her body was removed. The structure was sold and re-erected in the grounds of Christchurch Priory.

When I edited this picture to black and white it really added an eerie look to it, more than the original colour version.