Ailesbury Mausoleum

The Ailesbury Mausoleum situated in the churchyard of St Mary's Church, Maulden, in Bedfordshire, is a Grade II listed structure built in 1656 by Thomas Bruce, 1st Earl of Elgin (1599–1663) (father by his 1st wife of Robert Bruce, 2nd Earl of Elgin, 1st Earl of Ailesbury (1626-1685)), of nearby Houghton House in the parish of Maulden, for the purpose of housing the coffin and "splendid monument" of his second wife, Lady Diana Cecil (d.1654), a daughter of William Cecil, 2nd Earl of Exeter and widow of Henry de Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford. In the opinion of the architectural historian Sir Howard Colvin (1991) it is one of the first two free-standing mausoleums ever built in England, together with the Cabell Mausoleum at Buckfastleigh in Devon.

It was customary before the use of mausoleums in England for prominent gentry and nobility to be buried within the parish churches of which they owned the advowson, or which served the parish within which was situated the manor of which they were lords and in which was situated their manor house and principal seat. In the early mediaeval era exceptionally wealthy such persons desired to be buried within abbeys or monasteries founded by themselves or their ancestors (usually for the express purpose of funding monks or nuns to pray continually for the rapid transition of their souls and those of their ancestors through the uncertain stage of Purgatory and rapidly onwards to eternal rest in Heaven). If sufficiently eminent such persons were buried in a cathedral. Such burials usually were made at the north side of the altar in the chancel, the position of greatest honour, and a most sacred spot, or if already occupied, elsewhere in the chancel or in a dedicated family chapel elsewhere within the church, usually situated at the east end of a new aisle expressly built by the family for that purpose.

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