Gloucester Museum, acc. no. 6/1979

This capital is part of a group of seven capitals and column fragments found in the 1970s built into the late medieval pigeon house at Frocester Court. The stones probably came originally from the old parish church of St Peter in Frocester, where a late Anglo-Saxon church was built in an earlier, fifth- to eighth-century burial ground (Heighway 1987, 124–5, figs.). Three capitals and a column fragment were removed and deposited in Gloucester Museum for safe keeping (Price 1980, 78–9, fig. 8b).

Good

Capital, cut back to a straight edge on both sides for reuse in pigeon house. The capital has a projecting half-round moulding along the top and a flatter, slightly wider moulding along the bottom that projects 2 cm (0.8 in) from the face. The face of the capital curves in slightly towards the bottom moulding. The front face of the capital carries a foliate decoration in relief 0.6–0.9 cm (0.2–0.4 in) deep.

This capital originally had a curving, cone-shaped profile, very similar to some of the tenth- or early eleventh-century capitals reused in the eastern slype at Worcester Cathedral (e.g. Worcester Cathedral 3b and 3f, Ills. 678, 682). The decoration consists of an acanthus-like fan of broad, fleshy leaves springing from two trailing loops that curve up on either side of the central fan of leaves. These trailing strands originally continued around onto the sides of the capital, and there is just enough surviving carving beside the cut-back sides to suggest that they probably terminated in spirals. Zarnecki suggested a late eleventh-century date for the carving (Price 1980, 79), but if the shape of the capital is also taken into account a date in the first half of the eleventh century seems more likely.

At the time of the Domesday Survey, Frocester was a possession of Gloucester Abbey (Moore 1982, no. 10,2). In a late-medieval list of benefactions Gloucester Abbey claimed to have been given Frocester by a brother of King Beornwulf of Mercia (823–5), but there is a clear anomaly for the donor has the distinctively Scandinavian name of Ravenswart (Hart 1863–7, i, 77). Frocester seems to have been the site of a minor minster (Gray 1963; Blair 2005, 190 n. 33).

First half eleventh century

Price 1980, 78–9, fig. 8b