Appendix B item (stones wrongly associated with pre-Conquest period)

Tympanum above north doorway bearing a representation of the Harrowing of Hell (Ill. 794). In 1933 Dobson suggested that the carving on this tympanum was Anglo-Saxon (Dobson 1933, 273–4), but, while the stooped stance of Christ is similar to the South Cerney 2 figure (p. 247, Ill. 440) to which Dobson compared it, many aspects of the carving are quite different. The face is more finely modelled and the halo is heavily dished. The folds of Christ's tunic are light and delicate, while the hem of the tunic sweeps energetically up and down through S-shaped folds, many of which are completely pierced. The sun, shining down on the redeemed, has a face, and the devil under Christ's feet is very obviously part-animal. Both the Quenington and the South Cerney 2 depictions may share a common source with the mid eleventh-century Harrowing of Hell from the Tiberius Psalter (Backhouse et al. 1984, 83, cat. 66, pl. xx). However, the Quenington carving is a classical piece of twelfth-century carving, set in an entirely twelfth-century doorway. The carving is not inset into the tympanum but is carved onto the same slab of oolitic limestone. It is also a pair for the carving of the Coronation of the Virgin over the south doorway at the church.