10/04/2026
The other day you may have seen us post about our new favourite review, highlighting some spare apostrophes on one of our church memorials from the 1830s (and a few spelling mistakes on our information boards).
One of our followers kindly took the time out of their day to send us an e-mail telling us about this incredible example of a stone mason's mistake from Sir John Dutton's memorial in St Mary Magdalene's Church in Sherborne. As they said, it's such small error, no one's probably noticed it before. 😄 We suddenly feel a lot better about a typo or two that have made it through, thanks Adrian Prince! Incidentally the infamous 𝙹̶𝚘̶𝚑̶𝚗̶ Peter Barwick mentioned here (Sir John Dutton's maternal grandfather) was one of the physicians in ordinary to Charles II, meaning he acted as a personal doctor to the King!
Perhaps the Buckley's stone mason, who's work is displayed in our venue here at St Michael's church, was just following in a long, proud tradition of making a memorial even MORE memorable.
As an aside, did Sir John Dutton die in 1742, 1743, or did we miss the bit in school where we learned about 174⅔?
The Dutton's owned and lived at Sherborne House from the sixteenth century until World War II so maybe The Sherborne has some answers for us.
Photograph of Sir John Dutton's memorial © KGG, used with permission.
