The monument to Charles Cavendish at Brixworth

This monument stands beside the main road a little to the south of Brixworth.

It looks like a stray Eleanor Cross, but turns out to be a monument to Charles Cavendish, Third Baron Chesham.

As the Brixworth History Society tells its story:

It was hunting that was his passion. From 1883 until 1893 he was Master of the Bicester Hounds. Although his county seat was Latimer House in Buckinghamshire he rode all over the country, especially the Grafton and Warwickshire Hunts, but particularly enjoyed the Pytchley. ...

On the fateful day he was riding with the Pytchley at Welton near Daventry. His horse jumped a fence but did not clear the ditch on the other side. Lord Chesham was thrown and suffered a broken neck.

He was buried on 14th November 1907 at Latimers in Chesham, Buckinghamshire.

Such was his popularity that when Lord Annaly opened a fund to erect a memorial, over 350 contributed, including heads of state, those who served with him and those from other walks of life who had admired him.

This is why the memorial was erected in Brixworth in Pytchley Hunt country. It was commissioned from Pullen and Sons of Northampton and was erected in October 1908, the stone trough replacing an earlier wooden one.

The page also gives the inscription at the base of the monument, which it says is "difficult to read today due to damage caused a few years ago by saboteurs":

Erected by friends in the Pytchley Country

to the memory of Charles William, third Baron Chesham, K.C.B.,

who met his death hile hunting with the Pytchley hounds,

Novr. 9th 1907, aged 56 years.

A good man; a gallant soldier; a true sportsman.

Chesham was a Conservative peer and the last holder of the government office Master of the Buckhounds.

Besides this monument at Brixworth, there is a statue of him in Market Square, Ayelesbury.