Brand, T.C., ‘An Uneven History: Monumental Brasses and Stone Ledgers in English Church Floors’ (Oxford 1982).

Husbands are almost always specified on women's grave inscriptions.

Having no husbands, and therefore no sons, we remained daughters, sisters.

It is less than one-quarter the size of the memorial placed to Elizabeth Etchingham's father and grandparents, one of several factors suggesting economies were taken in the production of this memorial. On the reverse is an inscription to Thomas Austin, son of a London mercer, who died in 1405. Although we cannot be certain that the brass's placement in the south chancel is original, the location would be of a piece with these cost-saving measures.

The depictions of the women bear the conventional signs of unmarried status. Elizabeth Etchingham is smaller and her flowing hair shows her as a nubile maiden, whereas the larger size, coifed hair and uncovered head of Agnes Oxenbridge tell us that she was older but still maidenly.

K. M. Phillips, ‘Maidenhood as the Perfect Age of Woman's Life’, in Young Medieval Women, K. J. Lewis, N. J. Menuge and K. M. Phillips (New York 1999), 1–24.

94 per cent of aristocratic women made their careers as wives, mothers and widows. However, singleness was not unknown.

Gatskill, James, ‘As she were mine sister’: Extra-familial Female Relationships in Late Medieval England (London 1991).

As Paul Binski has noted, ‘The turning of figures on their axis enabled the intimacy of the marriage to be expressed’. Although the move to showing the female figure in semi-profile is sometimes attributed to a desire to better illustrate elaborate headdresses.

I have not found a single example of a design in which the husband is turned towards a front-facing wife.

Neither the artisan nor anyone else seemed to have considered this affective turn unsuited for a female couple or unseemly for their families.

I have learnt to hear, to feel almost, the particular fall of your foot on the stair, the cracking of the air as your gown brushes mine.

Women's gowns on late-15th-century brasses generally fall in folds so deep, stable and balanced that they seem to root the women to the ground rather than propel them in one direction or another. Yet, the gowns of Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge were arranged in such a way as illustrate their movement towards each other.