The Monument
Fig. 20: Catherine Frere and Farmer & Brindley, Frere.
(Fig. 20) The monument to Bartle Frere was completed in three years and at its heart is the notion of the deceased as a Christian servant whose ‘life was devoted’ to the ‘Glory of God’, and who served the ‘state in many lands’. These were also the two central planks of the defence of his honour always given by himself and his supporters.
The grave ledger is a permanent version of the funeral coffin, centred on a huge blood–red cross against a white background. The red marble is ‘Brèche Sanguine’ (blood breccia), a marble stained red with the ferric oxide hematite. It was originally taken from ancient Numidia by the Romans, and the quarries were rediscovered in 1880 in Oran, Algeria, then a French colony. The stone was imported to England through Frere’s friend, Lambert Playfair, Consul of Algeria. The bloody cross on the ledger neatly encapsulated the notion of a Christian martyr in Africa, a frequent trope in St Paul’s Cathedral’s late–Victorian pantheon (fig. 21).
Fig. 21: Frere’s ledger.
The yellow stone arranged with black marble into a chequerboard pattern is also African, the famous ‘Giallo Antico’ from Tunisia that decorates the Pantheon and the Arch of Constantine in Rome, the source of which had been relocated in 1876 (fig.22–23).
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Fig. 22: Interior view, Pantheon, Rome (Macrons, CC BY-SA 4.0).
Fig. 23: Columns and pilaster, Arch of Constantine, 312 – 315 and older spolia, marbles, Rome (Steven Zucker via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The yellow marble continues the imperial African theme, and gives a permanent form to the gold–fringed pall that had lain over Frere’s coffin (fig. 24–25).
Fig. 24–25: Monument Marble (© M. Greg Sullivan).
Coloured stones, freshly rediscovered, were the trademark of Farmer and Brindley, the firm of sculptors, architectural carvers and marble masons run by the adventurous William Brindley, who had located the source of numerous antique marbles himself on travels in Africa, Turkey and Egypt, and who acted as sole British agent for newly discovered stones.
The wall monument, however, was designed by Catherine Frances Frere, Frere’s second daughter, who looked to the family’s local church of St Mary’s in Wimbledon for inspiration. Frere had asked to be buried in the parish church, so it is possible that the design was taken from there in order to provide a clear connection with their home: in particular, the monument to William Walter (d. 1587) and his wife Katherine (d. 1587) (fig.26–27). The panel to Philip Lewston (d. 1462) at St Mary’s would also have been a useful model for building a grandiose monument around a long textual inscription.
Fig. 26–27: Monument to William Walter, d.1587, and wife Katharine Walter, d.1587, St Mary’s Parish Church in Wimbledon, London (courtesy of and © Bob Speel); Catherine Frere and Farmer & Brindley, Frere.
Although Catherine Frere said the monument was only ‘partly’ based on the 16th–century monument’s design, it in fact borrows very heavily in form and decoration. Text panels are set into an alabaster mural monument, with inlays of coloured marble. The monument is surmounted by a large family heraldic achievement – the Frere coat of arms with the crest . The incised vertical grooves on the frame, the oval cabuchons of coloured marble, the rectangular inlays, the strapwork coffering, the decoration of the pilaster supports, the gutterae at the base, and the dentils at the cornice, are all borrowed from the Walter monument. However, the design for the Frere is expanded downwards to include a three–panel surbase for further lists of his honours, and upwards to include a pediment with two standing rosettes, on which is a carved heraldic achievement incorporating two polychrome shields and a large crest at the peak reaching up into the groining of the crypt.
The family was extraordinarily proud of their family history, scrupulously researched by Mary, and claimed direct descent from both Charlemagne and King Alfred the Great. More details of Frere’s genealogy are on the inscription of the grave ledger. The use of British alabaster no doubt also signalled the family’s Britishness and harked back to an earlier age of British faith and nobility. The inlay is a similar red Brèche Sanguine to that used in the grave ledger, providing the flash of modern imperial exoticism in an otherwise faithfully Elizabethan design.
The Monument’s Designer – Catherine Frere
Catherine Frere was born in India in 1848. Her artwork was first published in 1868, when she illustrated her sister Mary’s popular book Old Deccan Days; or, Hindoo Fairy Legends Current in Southern India. The volume consisted of stories from the oral tradition retold to Mary Frere by Anna Liberata de Souza, Mary’s companion while accompanying her father on a three-month tour in Southern India around Madras (now Chennai). The book was illustrated with Catherine’s drawings of Indian figures, landscapes, and animals (fig. 28–36).
Fig. 28–29: Front cover and title page of Old Deccan Days, or, Hindoo Fairy Legends, Collected From Oral Tradition by M. Frere, with an Introduction and Notes by Sir Bartle Frere and Illustrated by C. F. Frere, London: John Murray, 1868 (courtesy of National Library of Scotland via Archive.org, CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 SCOTLAND)
Fig. 30: Catherine F. Frere, ‘Anna Liberata de Souza (Ayah), the Narrator; from Old Deccan Days; or, Hindoo Fairy Legends, Collected From Oral Tradition by M. Frere, with an Introduction and Notes by Sir Bartle Frere, London: John Murray, 1868 (courtesy of National Library of Scotland via Archive.org, CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 SCOTLAND)
Fig. 31–36: Catherine F. Frere, illustrations from Old Deccan Days; or, Hindoo Fairy Legends, Current in Southern India, Collected From Oral Tradition by M. Frere, with an Introduction and Notes by Sir Bartle Frere, London: John Murray, 1868 (courtesy of National Library of Scotland via Archive.org, CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 SCOTLAND)
The book was later translated into numerous languages, including Marathi and Gujerati. The first American edition (also 1868), and later printingsle Old Deccan Days, or, Hindoo Fairy Legends Current in Southern India () did not include Catherine’s figurative drawing; instead, each story was topped by a short banner and tailed by a decorative shape, each incorporating local flora, animals, birds or mythical creature, not credited but probably also by Catherine. The banner is a similar device to that used on the monument, where stems and flowers act as line–fillers in the text of the inscription panels (fig. 37–42).
Fig. 37–42: Attrib. Catherine Frere, decorations as story headers in Old Deccan Days; or, Hindoo Fairy Legends, Current in Southern India, Collected From Oral Tradition by M. Frere, With an Introduction and Notes by Sir Bartle Frere, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1868 (Public Domain via Archive.org); and decorations detail from Frere’s monument.
Catherine Frere later accompanied her father to South Africa, by which time she was an extremely polished and detailed watercolourist, as surviving drawings attest, such as a sketch of the Swahili women at a diplomatic meeting and a South African landscape of Simon’s Bay (fig. 43–44).
Fig. 43: Catherine Frere, ‘Some of the Zanzibar and other natives of Mr. H. M. Stanley’s party’, 1877, watercolour, Royal Geographical Society Collections; the women’s names are recorded underneath, (© Royal Geographical Society [with IBG]. CC BY 4.0 via ResearchGate).
Fig. 44: Catherine Frere, HMS Orontes leaving Simon’s Bay with the body of the Prince Imperial of France, 15 June 1879, watercolour on paper, annotated on verso: ‘Simon’s Bay from Red Hill looking East. (Sunset reflection) English men of war firing minute guns at sunset (June 15, 1879) on the day of the transhipment of the body of the Remains of the Prince Imperial from HMS ‘Boudica’ to HMS ‘Orontes’ / Sketched by command of her Majesty the Queen, by Catherine F. Frere, RCIN 920105 (© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust).
On her return to England she exhibited her artworks, giving the profits to the South African Relief Fund, and used the images to educate visitors about South Africa in company with her father. In 1880 she showed at Grosvenor House, in 1881 at the Librarie d’Art at 134 Bond Street, and later the same year at the Yorkshire Institution. A review in The Graphic described her as ‘an artist of more than ordinary ability’. They particularly commended her drawings of 17th–century Dutch architecture in Cape Town, and her vivid, scientific, and delicate drawings of South African flora, both enthusiasms which presage her design for the monument.
Twenty years later she still proselytised for British South Africa. In 1900 she held another exhibition in London of her paintings, and in 1902 she spoke at the British Refugee Fund, reading letters from her sister in South Africa which described the conditions in concentration camps as far better than had been described, actually serving as bastions of education and mutual respect – clearly in denial of the close to 50,000 Boers and Black Africans who died in British concentration camps. Later she edited cookery books, including the influential Cookbook of Lady Clark of Tillypronie (1913), which included numerous curry recipes.
Monument Unveiling and Reception
Fig. 45: Catherine Frere and Farmer & Brindley, Frere.
The memorial was dedicated in St Paul’s on 3rd March 1888 (fig. 45). It was unveiled by the Bishop of Salisbury (Frere’s cousin), in front of about 50 other members of the family, a handful of close friends, and a representative of the Prince of Wales. The Bishop handed over the monument to the perpetual guardianship of St Paul’s, a hymn was sung and a blessing pronounced. The Bishop recounted the central message, that Frere had ‘in many stations and in all relations of life, at home and abroad, ever tried to do his duty to God and man’. Press reports of the monument were respectful towards the ‘distinguished public servant’, and enthusiastic about the monument itself. The Morning Post described it as ‘of great beauty’, and, in company with The Graphic, scrupulously listed its design features, its Renaissance style, and the different types of marbles employed by the sculptors.
In 1899 the grave was opened to receive the body of Lady Frere. The area was draped with black – including the grave of fellow colonial governor George Grey – and the tomb was surrounded with white flowers given by those who remembered ‘the zeal and intelligence with which Lady Frere aided her husband in his labours for the amelioration of the condition of the people entrusted to his care’. The wives of many colonial governors were in attendance, including Lady Napier of Magdala, and messages of condolence were sent by the Queen.
The monument is notable in St Paul’s crypt for its size, being at the time the third largest after the Nelson and Wellington, despite being a non–state commission. It stretches out across the wall and the floor, and up to the ceiling, as if in imitation of the expansionist character of its subject. The prolix recantation of the honours of Sir Bartle Frere forms a stark contrast with the Wellington, however, which only gives the name of the deceased to impart to the contemporary viewer his unchallenged importance. The Bartle Frere tomb, on the other hand, stood vocally at one side of a contemporary controversy, not just over the actions and policies of the man, but over the character and future of the British empire as a whole.
By Greg Sullivan