The Wax Effigy of Sarah Hare

Within the Hare Chapel of Stow Bardolph’s Church of Holy Trinity, sits Sarah Hare—or at least, a disturbingly lifelike approximation of her. On the 9th of April 1744, Hare died of blood poisoning after pricking her finger on a needle. Upon death, her will stated: 'I desire to have my face and hands made in wax with a piece of crimson satin thrown like a garment in a picture hair upon my head and put in a case of Mahogany with a glass before and fix’d up so near the place were my corps lyes as it can be with my name and time of Death.'

As such, and still, within a mahogany cabinet sits Sarah Hare’s funerary effigy, portraying her as in life. It is not known if her likeness was cast in life or post-mortem, but experts believe that the life-size effigy is dressed in Hare’s own clothing and its brown curls of hair are from one of her own wigs. Though stone statues of the deceased can be found within churches across the country, Hare’s wax effigy is the only one of its kind in England outside of Westminster Abbey.