Select a site alphabetically from the choices shown in the box below. Alternatively, browse sculptural examples using the Forward/Back buttons.
Chapters for this volume, along with copies of original in-text images, are available here.
Object type: Figure panel
Measurements: H. 34 cm (13.25 in); W. 25.5 cm (10 in); D. Built in
Stone type: Heavily encrusted slab with hardly any fresh surfaces. This is a pale grey (N7), well-sorted, shelly, clastsupported oolite with the ooliths standing proud. Ooliths mostly in the range 0.3 to 0.5 mm diameter, with a few up to 0.6 mm. ?Portland stone, Portland Freestone Member, Portland Limestone Formation, Portland Group, Upper Jurassic
Plate numbers in printed volume: Pl. 52
Corpus volume reference: Vol 7 p. 97-8
(There may be more views or larger images available for this item. Click on the thumbnail image to view.)
A (broad): Slab with stylised carving of a human figure. The carving is crude and deeply cut, and shows a frontal standing figure with upraised arms. The right hand is open but the left appears to be holding onto a double cord. The head is grotesque: the hair is a series of blobs, the huge lentoid eyes extend into the ears, and the nose is large and shapeless. The mouth is a single curving incised line. The figure is dressed in a long-sleeved garment, with tight decorated cuffs, a belt at the waist, and below the waist a series of n-shaped curves with what could be a sexual organ in the centre. On either side of its left arm is an arrow or spear, and on the right another rod-like feature with a curling end which touches its face.
This need not be Anglo-Saxon, but if copied from a crude depiction it could represent the descent of St Paul over the wall at Damascus holding onto ropes (Acts 9.25). An early example of this is the wall painting from the church of San Procolo, Naturno (Rickert 1957, ill. on p. 60), which has been dated eighth/ninth century. Likewise the ninth-century stucco capital from Malles (Stiegmann and Wenhoff 1999, 580, Abb. VIII.60a). For a later example, see the famous Hildesheim Column (Swarzenski 1954, fig. 120). This interpretation, however, does not seem very likely. The figure has many of the attributes and the crudity of carving of a sheelagh-nagig, and the sex organs could be of both sexes. Although this figure has been identified as a warrior because of the spear on its left side, the crude features of the head and the skirt-like feature could belong to either sex. Perhaps the short hair could be a conclusive masculine attribute. It is possible that the arrow or spear is piercing the left arm of the figure, in which case it could have been meant to depict a martyr. Alternatively it may have been some travesty of a Crucifixion with the lance and the sponge. The Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England) dated it to the eighth century (1970d, 50) and considered that it had northern European characteristics, which are not cited. On the whole this figure is best seen either as a sheelagh-na-gig or a crude misunderstood rendering of a religious image.
