Countess Pillar

The Countess Pillar is a 17th century monument in Cumbria, England, between Penrith and Appleby.

There is a small, railed enclosure where the drive from Brougham Castle meets the road from Penrith to Appleby. Inside stands an octagonal pillar and a low table, both made of local stone. The pillar, on the roadside, supports a square capital, on three sides of which are sundials, on the fourth a pair of heraldic shields.

the inscription reads -

"This pillar was erected, in the year 1656, by Anne, &c. for a memorial of her last parting with her pious mother, Margaret Countess Dowager of Cumberland, on the 2d of April, 1616; in memory whereof she hath left an annuity of 4l. to be distributed to the poor of the parish of Brougham, every 2d day of April for ever, upon the stone table placed hard by. Laus Deo!"

The pillar has been restored by English Heritage.

The "Anne" in question is Lady Anne Clifford, who had great respect for her mother, and erected this pillar in 1656 on the spot where she said farewell to her mother, before her mother's death in 1616. Nearby is the Dolestone, where alms were distributed annually by Lady Anne. She also founded the almshouses at Beamsley, near Skipton Castle.

The pillar is a monument to a moment: the moment of cessation of the most important relationship of Lady Anne's life. It takes us into a world of complex emotional, financial and political allegiances, in which women had constantly to struggle for autonomy, but in which it was possible, if one struggled hard enough and lived long enough, to achieve independence and fulfilment.

The Pillar has a triple function: it is useful as a sundial, a focus for charity -- the annual dole -- and it marks a profoundly important point in Lady Anne's emotional life. She was absent from her mother's deathbed: the pillar is significant as marking the spot at which her mother died to her.

The monument is a multifaceted symbol. As the Bishop of Carlisle noted, it has biblical precedent -- Jacob raised a pillar over the grave of his favourite wife, Rachel -- and the pillar is a relatively common motif on contemporary funerary monuments to women. But it has other associations. The pillar stands for immortality, after the pattern of the obelisks and pillars seen on so many tombs of this date, but it is also one of the objects most closely associated with the Passion (the pillar to which Christ was bound for the Flagellation). It is an attribute of Samson, who destroyed the Philistines by tearing down the pillars of their temple, and of the martyr St Sebastian. The Cardinal Virtue, Fortitude, clasps a pillar. The associations of the pillar with Fortitude, with the sufferings of martyrs, and also with the eventual triumph of the righteous over the Philistines make it an appropriate symbol of both the Countess of Cumberland and Lady Anne Clifford. The sundials refer to the passage of time -- the time that had passed between the last meeting and its commemoration, and the time which had brought about Lady Anne's triumph over her enemies. She might well see herself as Truth, the daughter of Time.

Lady Anne's pillar is not crowned, but she spent her childhood at a court where the crowned pillar was a potent symbol of Queen Elizabeth I of England, with whose cult her father was intimately involved -- he succeeded Sir Henry Lee as Queen's Champion in 1590, the year of Anne's birth. The pillar was also associated with Astraea, the virgin identified with Justice and with Truth, the daughter of Time, another symbol used by Elizabeth I.

Lady Anne's pillar, therefore, brings the symbolism of the late sixteenth century into the late seventeenth. It stands for the power she had finally attained over her northern lands, and the triumph of a female justice and truth over her enemies.