Sir Lionel Lyde: united by the Church, parted by the Church

Across the field ahead is a Greek-temple church where a squire and his wife lie at opposite ends, so the story goes, because they couldn't stand each other.

Ayot St Lawrence has two churches: a picturesque medieval ruin in the village and a white Palladian temple standing in the fields. The lord of the manor, Sir Lionel Lyde, is said to have begun pulling down the old church because it spoilt the view from his new house, defying the Bishop of Lincoln, and then built the new one. He ruled that nobody but he and his wife should lie in it, their tombs placed in pavilions at opposite ends of the colonnade. Symmetry may explain it, but local tradition says the marriage was miserable: the Church had united them in life, so it should keep them apart in death.