This heavily worn Purbeck marble effigy commemorates Walter de la Wyle ⓘ, Bishop of Salisbury, one of the formative ecclesiastical figures associated with the early life of Salisbury Cathedral. Though now much mutilated, the monument retains a restrained dignity characteristic of mid-13th-century episcopal memorial sculpture.

The bishop is shown recumbent, vested for office, with his head resting on a cushion and his hands originally joined in prayer. Extensive surface erosion has softened nearly all facial and ornamental detail, yet the overall form of the figure remains legible. The choice of Purbeck marble—once finely polished and widely favoured for high-status ecclesiastical monuments—links the effigy to contemporary elite funerary practice in southern England.

Time and use have reduced the sculpture to a fragmentary state, but its survival within the cathedral preserves an important material witness to Walter de la Wyle’s episcopate. The effigy stands not as a display of personal grandeur, but as a sober memorial to a bishop remembered for his service to the cathedral and for the architectural vision that helped shape Salisbury’s precinct, most notably through the establishment of its cloisters.