The Death Mask

This is a death-mask, a way of remembering the dead by creating a cast of a person's face, either in wax or plaster. 

This was found by stonemason, Matthius Garn, in 2017 during renovation of the clerestory windows in the nave of Hull Minster. Is was anchored to the existing label stop with a cast iron peg which was rusting making it unsafe.

These windows are the highest in the building and have a figurehead at the point where the window tracery meets at the bottom. This is called a labelstop. The labelstops in this area all date from the original construction of this side of the building in the 1400's. This mask is far more recent dating possibly dating from the late 1700's -1800's when work was done to restore part of the nave. 

The mask is made from a composite of ground stone and plaster and was cast on the face of a dead person. In the days before photography, death masks were a way of preserving someone's exact likeness. They were very commonly made for wealthy people up until the end of the 1800s. Sometimes they were used to help sculptors create statues, on other occasions they were used as part of the funeral procession, placed on a dressed figure on the coffin. A copy of the mask has been made to replace this one and now sits up high in the nave.

As yet we have no proof of who this person might have been. However, we are guessing that the death mask might have belonged to John Healey Bromby who was a prominent vicar at Holy Trinity, the longest serving vicar ever in the UK. The location of the mask looking down over the pulpit implies it si someone prominent. 

Panorama | Hull Minster Heritage