Writers in Churches in Nottinghamshire #5: Robert Thoroton in Car Colston

In the church of St Mary, Car Colston, on the wall of the south aisle, is the above plaque which serves as an adequate introduction to Robert Thoroton:

'This Tablet was erected in the year 1908
by a few Members of the Throton Society
in memory of
ROBERT THOROTON,
of Car-Colston,
Doctor of Physick, & a Justice of the Peace
for this County,
who died here in the year 1698, and whose
body was buried in the stone sarcophagus
now preserved in this Church.
In the year 1677 he published
"The Antiquities of  Nottinghamshire,"
a work of great labour
and erudition.'

Against the north wall of the chancel is Thoroton's headstone, the story of which is given in the link at the bottom of the post, which is an article from a 1901 edition of Transactions of the Thoroton Society.

'ROBERT THOROTON
M.D.
DIED NOV 21st
A.D.
1678'

Thoroton's red Mansfield stone coffin, made six years before his death and inscribed with his ancestral heraldic emblems, is also in the church. The chancel underwent restoration work in 1845, during which Thoroton's coffin was found and opened. His skull was displayed in a village shop as a curiosity until the vicar had the remains collected and re-buried. It had to be dug up again in 1863, and the coffin was transferred to the church.

The nave looking east, with the plaque on the south aisle wall to the right of the pillar in the foreground.

St Mary in a rare moment of sunshine (this year).

(I visited this church because of the Diocese of Southwell & Nottingham's Open Churches Weekends (Saturday and Sunday 14 and 15 July and 21 and 22 July 2012). Details of participating churches and opening times are listed here.)

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Dr Thoroton's Headstone, by Thomas M. Blagg