EXCERPT from INTO THE SILENT LAND: HISTORIC CEMETERIES & GRAVEYARDS IN ONTARIO by Jennifer McKendry, copyright      home page

chapter three, Architecture Honouring the Dead, page 74

.....The family or communal mausoleum is the most closely associated form of architecture with death. Here the body lies untouched by the suffocating earth. The family tomb distinguishes and commemorates the family name from the rest of the interments, and one lies for eternity with relatives. Instead of a slab marker springing from the ground, one's resting place is a substantial three-dimensional masonry building easily seen in the cemetery grounds. The prestige associated with such mausoleums can be traced to the integration of small versions of classical and medieval buildings in the English Garden of the 18^th century. On the vast estates of British aristocracy pleasure grounds were designed to look natural. Punctuating the groves of trees, shimmering waves of grasses and curved shorelines of small lakes, were marble, stone and brick temples, pavilions and chapels that acted as visual reference points and resting places while one toured the grounds. One of these buildings was a mausoleum for the Howard family at Castle Howard, Yorkshire - the first private tomb not associated with or attached to a church.[1] Designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1728-9, it was modelled after Roman mausoleums such as the tomb of Gallienus engraved in 1699.[2]

A Canadian version of a family mausoleum on a private estate is found on the Shore Road near Adolphustown (fig. 3.18).[3] Built on Allison land for the Allison family in 1873, it is spectacularly sited on the shores of the Bay of Quinte off Lake Ontario. An iron fence surrounds three sides of the large lot, once part of 600 acres belonging to this Loyalist family....[continued]