Episode 16. Marquis d’Oisy

SYNOPSIS

As the photo attests, few of those drawn like moths to the candle of Revd Conrad Noel’s dramatic ceremonial at Thaxted had a theatrical sense to rival the Marquis d’Oisy.  Although Countess ‘Daisy’ of Warwick’s aristocratic origins were certain, the self-styled Amand Edouard Ambroise Marie Lowis Etienne Phillipe d’Sant Andre Tournay, Marquis d’Oisy’s claim on the French nobility was sketchy. Yet the Marquis’ real origins lay not in Rio de Janeiro as he claimed but in Bath, Somerset, where an Ambrose Thomas was born to a self-employed gas fitter. After finding brief sanctuary with the Anglican Benedictine Brothers on Caldey Island, Ambrose Thomas moved to London, finding work as a navvy, before taking up ecclesiastical and cinema-scenery design. With grander title in place, on being loaned a run-down medieval cottage in Pledgdon Green by an actress, the Marquis enriched North West Essex life with furniture painting and direction of historical pageants.     

GUEST

Julian Litten’s links to Thaxted date back to 1964 and the church-visiting days of his youth. Encountering the wooden eagle lectern that had been painted in pastel colours and two garishly-painted cupboards, he noted that they had been painted by an artist with the unusual name of the Marquis d’Oisy. Julian was on the curatorial staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum between 1966 and 1999.  Described as ‘England’s foremost funerary historian’, he published The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral since 1450 in 1991. The biography, The Mystery of Marquis d’Oisy was published in 2015.

Julian’s interview with Simon was recorded online on 14 March 2021.