Thomas Gorges

Sir Thomas Gorges (1536 – 30 March 1610) of Longford Castle in Wiltshire, was a courtier and Groom of the Chamber to Queen Elizabeth I.

With the artistic direction of his wife he built the surviving Longford Castle on the banks of the River Avon, to the south of the city of Salisbury, a triangular Swedish pattern castle with a round tower in each corner, with deer park, fruit garden and kitchen garden.

He was buried in Salisbury Cathedral, where survives (at the east end of the north choir aisle, on the north side of the Lady Chapel) his magnificent monument with recumbent effigies of himself and his wife, erected in 1635 by his son Edward Gorges, 1st Baron Gorges,[6] after the death of his widow.

[8] These devices are possibly a reference to Leonardo da Vinci's drawings for Luca Pacioli (Divina Proportione, Paganini, Venice, 1509),[9] ultimately based on Plato's Timaeus in which each of the regular polyhedra (or five regular solids) are assigned to the atomic structure of one of the five elements, with the dodecahedron representing the whole celestial sphere.

"All the known examples of these polyhedral sculptures originate within a period of about 30 years, during which England and the rest of Europe saw a resurgence of interest in quasi-mystical geometric symbolism".