Sigginstown Castle

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  • Generous People who do neat things!
    Brass Rubbings -  William Street.
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We are always interested in people and artists who have traditional skills and would like to contribute to the castle's restoration. 

As we work on the building there will be a variety of skills needed and hopefully an opportunity for people to learn. We would like to invite teachers to demonstrate and share their skills with others. We can pay reasonable cost for materials, and potentially instructor fees.  If you have an idea for a workshop, or would like to see your work in a castle please contact us! 


William Street contacted us through a friend.  He has been doing lovely silk screens of brass rubbings for decades and offered to give us a few for the castle if we were interested.  Wow - of course we were interested!



Interestingly, we had a large brass rubbing Liz's father had given her years before. It stands in our hallway in the US, and we had started thinking that one day he would go over to Ireland to a more suitable home. 


 The text on the bottom says "Sir Roger de Bures 1302", so we have called him "Sir Roger" all these years. He is a bit battered and worn, but we like him all the same!  


William told us that the rubbing was incorrectly named and dated. Our knight's correct name is Sir Robert de Bures.


William's website has a lot of fascinating information on it, and now we know that Sir Robert de Bures's brass is at the Church of All Saints in Acton.

William has generously sent us four lovely silk screens that will one day hang in the castle - probably in the tower, but possibly in the house. 

They are gorgeous and the photos don't really do them justice. For now they are safely stored...

Sir John d'Aubernoun the elder (1277) From the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey Stoke D'Abernon is a small village (population about 6000) situated between Cobham and Leatherhead in the county of Surrey.

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Margaret Cheyne (1419) From the Church of St Peter at Hever, Kent Hever is a village and civil parish in the Sevenoaks District of Kent, England, located on the River Eden. St Peter's Church at Hever (picture at right) houses the monumental brass of Margaret Cheyne (1419) (picture at right). This beautiful brass, with its elegant symmetry, is one of the most attractive of the surviving brasses from the early 15th century.

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The artist, William B. Streett, is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (class of 1955) and the University of Michigan, where he earned a PhD in engineering (1963). He retired from the Army in 1978, and spent the next 17 years on the faculty at Cornell University, in Ithaca, NY, where he served as Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Dean of the College of Engineering from 1984 to 1993. He retired from Cornell in 1995. He spent two years at Oxford University, as a NATO Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 1966 and as a Guggenheim Fellow in 1974-75. In 1966 he developed an interest in brass rubbing, and made about 100 rubbings at sites mostly in southern England. William lives in Ohio...

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Sir Robert de Grey (1387) From the Church of St Nicholas at Rotherfield Greys, Oxfordshire Rotherfield Greys is a village and civil parish in the Chiltern Hills in South Oxfordshire, two miles west of Henley-on-Thames. The brass of Sir Robert de Grey is in the Church of St Nicholas in Rotherfield Greys.

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Sir Robert de Bures (1302)
 From All Saints' Church, Acton, Suffolk Acton is a village and civil parish in the English county of Suffolk. The meaning of the name is "Village by the Oaks". Sir Robert de Bures, whose brass lies in the Church of All Saints at Acton (photograph at right), died in 1331 but his brass shows the fashionable armor of three decades earlier.

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