The burial place of Anne-Marie Fauques de Vaucluse at Fonthill, Wiltshire
Few people know where and when Anne-Marie Fauques de Vaucluse the writer was buried. When she died she did not get any obituaries, but the parish records survive and prove that she was buried on the estate of her friend and patron William Beckford. Beckford was the owner of a grand estate, Fonthill in Wiltshire, where he had a mansion in Palladian style. Nothing survives of it today except these imposing entrance gates. There were several villages on the estate, one called Fonthill Gifford. There, in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Anne-Marie Fauques was buried in 1804 under her married name of Madame de Starck. Although the house has gone and the original, classical style church was rebuilt in Victorian times, the fine landscaped park of the Beckford estate survives, with its woodlands and lake. It is now owned by the National Trust and most of it is grazed by cattle or sheep. The lake in the grounds of Fonthill, where the author went boating with William...