The posted coordinates will take you to the cemetery behind the church where you will collect some numbers. The entrance is through a small door to the left.
The cemetery is open 9.30-3pm.
St Mary Magdalen Roman Catholic Church
St Mary Magdalen Roman Catholic Church was designed in Gothic Revival style by Gilbert Blount and dates from 1852. Buried in the churchyard is John Francis Bentley (1839 – 1902), the architect of Westminster Cathedral in London.
Sir Richard and Lady Burton
The most interesting tomb in St. Mary Magdalen's churchyard is the mausoleum in the shape of an Arab tent where the coffins of Sir Richard Burton and his wife Isabel Arundell can be seen through a window at the back.
Sir Richard Burton lived from 1821-1890, at a time in history when exploration and scientific knowledge were advancing at a gallop. Full of the spirit of the age, Burton possessed a passionate curiosity about life in the little known Arab world and he persuaded the Royal Geographical Society in London to fund a series of adventures. He was a brilliant linguist, utterly fearless and a master of disguise, and so was able to penetrate the cities of Medina and Mecca. He secretly drew plans of the Great Mosque and its sacred inner shrine, the Kaaba, at Mecca.
Inspired by his part as an Arab pilgrim he then went to Harar, which was totally forbidden to non-Moslems, and made notes about the East African slave trade.
His notebooks were crammed with information, geographical, commercial and anthropological. His travel books were a literary success in London and the Royal Geographical Society agreed to fund the next expedition - to find the source of the White Nile. He set of with John Hanning Speke but the two explorers fell out at Lake Tanganyika. Their dispute over the source caused a furore at the Royal Geographical Society which only ended with the sudden death of Speke in 1864.
Being the British Consul in Fernando Po, West Africa, Santos, Brazil, Damascus and Trieste gave him time to explore and write. He married his Catholic wife, Isabel Arundell, in 1861. She was completely devoted to him, and tried to keep up with his rackety life, obeying his instructions to "pay, pack and follow", as he moved around the world. The Burtons were happy in Damascus, where they mixed easily with Arabs and Christians, but were eventually expelled for their over-enthusiastic involvement in local politics.
His last Consulate was at Trieste, where he spent his last years quietly with Isabel. It was at this time that he privately published his translations from Arabic of the Karma Sutra and The Arabian Nights. He published 27 books in his lifetime.
When he died in 1890, Isabel built this mausoleum and paid for the stained glass Memorial Window in the church.
The cache
At Sir Richard Burton's mausoleum, find the following:
A: Number of points of the star on the top
B: Number of steps on the stairs at the back
C: Number of crescents on the back of the mausoleum (add the digits together)
At the Countess De Vezlo mausoleum (see waypoint), find the following:
D: Comte age when he died
E: The year when the Contess died 19E8
To find the cache:
N51 28.(A-9)D(B-4)
W000 15.CCE
The cache location has changed on Nov 14th 2019. If you solved the puzzle before that, message me with your final coordinates and I will send you the new ones.
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For full information on how you can expand the Church Micro series by sadexploration please read the Place your own Church Micro page before you contact him at churchmicro.co.uk
See also the Church Micro Statistics and Home pages for further information about the series.
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