Secrets of the Shepherd’s Monument
By F. E. Robson
ISBN 9781916919075
 
Towards the end of the Renaissance, Nicolas Poussin painted his most celebrated picture, The Shepherds of Arcadia II (Et in Arcadia Ego). In the middle decades of the eighteenth century, Thomas Anson included a near perfect mirror-image of the painting, along with a ten-letter cipher, when he built the Shepherd’s Monument as one of fourteen follies in the grounds of Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire. Since their creation, the painting and the monument have been rumoured to possess secrets of Biblical importance.

Thursday 30 March 2023 marked 250 years since the day the secrets of the Shepherd’s Monument died. After more than fifteen years of research, fieldwork, a lot of trial and error, and a desire to know, many of those secrets, including the meaning of the cipher, are alive once more.