The lowest blocks on either side of the strip-work hood-moulding surrounding the external south door of the tower.

See discussion below.

All Saints

The blocks closest to the ground are extremely worn, and the section above on each side also shows considerably more wear than those above and those in the arch.

There is no question but that most, if not all, of the surviving strip-work around the outside of the south door are modern insertions, dating from the 1871 restoration (Ill. 462, see discussion below). However, it is worth looking at what survives as it is assumed by several commentators that the restoration was based on some evidence of the original.

Of the very lowest blocks, at ground level, that on the right (east) side of the door is extremely weather-worn and little is visible to the naked eye in normal daylight conditions: however the new photograph (Ill. 468) shows it to have had an eight-petalled 'marigold' enclosed in a circle, with the four petals forming the Latin cross more deeply cut and dominant than the four petals in the spandrels.

The block on the left (west) of the door (Ill. 467), however, clearly has a plant-stem curving from the bottom right to form a node with a fleshy central bud and the springing of one volute below, now almost completely gone, and also one above, which curves round to the right to enclose a large, possibly triple, form, either a triple leaf or a large bud between two leaves, of which the slender, scooped leaf on the right is the clearer.

The blocks above these, though more weathered than those even higher in the jambs, are part of the 1871 restoration, but are perhaps echoing what was more clearly seen at the time they were made. The arrangement on the original lowest block on the left is almost exactly mirrored in the block above, where the lowest volute of the running scroll is again vague, the bud has a trumpet-shape, and the leaf in the volute above has two hollow pointed leaves with a heart-shaped leaf in between. This volute pushes out a short shootlet above, and the stem continues to form a third volute which encloses a more naturalistic leaf. The same arrangement is reflected, in mirror-image, in the corresponding block on the east side. The blocks above on both sides are in a different coloured stone and are less weathered (though that on the east is also more weathered than that on the left). The style of cutting appears to be different too, but this may be a function of the degree of weathering.

It is agreed that Ledsham church has considerable surviving fabric from a very early church. H. M. Taylor and J. Taylor (1965, I, 379–84) placed the lower part of the west tower and the nave walls in their period A, with later additions; Ryder (1993, 165) considered that these parts and possibly the south porch represent a church of c. AD 700.

The earliest comment on the doorway is that by Sir Stephen Glynne (1917a, 205–6) who noted in 1862, before the 1871 restoration, that 'some rude sculpture also appears in the jambs, and within the large arch is another smaller one enclosed'. This statement seems to me ambiguous as to the position of the sculpture, but the 'jambs' referred to could mean the vertical blocks of the hood-moulding. The Taylors (1965, I, 381) considered the imposts (Ledsham 4a–b, Ills. 463–6) and the strip-work around the door (Ill. 462) both part of the 1871 restoration, but left open the possibility that their design had some connection with the original, impossible to prove because Glynne had left no sketch of what he had found. H. M. Taylor (1968c, 349) reiterated this view more strongly, suggesting that the strip-work around the door was cut during the major restoration of the church undertaken by H. Curzon in 1871. He also noted further confirmation that the hood-moulding itself was present before the restoration since it appears in the drawings prepared by Curzon to show the church in its original state (see Faull 1986a, pl. XLIIa). He is clear that these drawings do not show minor detail such as sculpture, and that this silence did not necessarily mean absence, for he concluded that the restorers would not have added sculpture at this point if there had been none before; he also stated that 'the lowest stones on each side of the hood-moulding look as if they were of early workmanship'.

Faull (1986a, 143 and fn. 6), contra both Taylor and R. N. Bailey, who had supported the probable originality of the lower blocks in a lecture in 1983, concluded that neither the interlace on the imposts (see Ledsham 4 below) nor any of the decoration in the jambs is original. She produced another early drawing to show that this too did not include any evidence of decoration around the door (ibid., pl. XLIIb): however it has to be said that the evidence is inconclusive on this point. Her main argument was that limestone (in the Norman parts of the building) and sandstone are incompatible if used together, and especially with limestone above causes excessive decay by chemical action. The lower, Anglo-Saxon parts of the building show considerable deterioration all round; and she further suggested that the type of sandstone used would have contributed to the visible decay. She concluded that all parts of the doorway are Curzon's replacements (she knew that some of the blocks were Millstone Grit, like the modern parts of the frieze inside the church, see Ledsham 5 below) and that the lowest blocks have become as weathered as they are since 1871: there was therefore no evidence of pre-Conquest decoration on the outside of the church.

Butler (1987) accepted the rapid deterioration put forward by Faull (and indeed gave further reasons why this should have continued until very recently), but argued that Curzon was a careful restorer, citing the restoration of the thirteenth-century doorway to the south porch of Ledsham church as evidence for his practice of careful copying. He provided an analysis of Glynne's 1862 description and rough sketch (ibid., fig. 2) of the then blocked doorway (which showed he could not have seen the inner arch), to prove that the 'rude sculpture' must have been on the outer jambs, and also that the original form of the outer arch had plain imposts as at Laughton-en-le-Morthen (Ryder 1982, 71, fig. on 76), with decoration confined to the jambs. This analysis enabled him to show what Curzon restored, including the addition of the decoration on the arch of the hood-mould. He therefore reverted to the view that the original decoration of the jambs must have had both a plant-scroll ('a foliage strand'), which Curzon used to provide a balanced composition around the door, and an eight-leaved marigold, with which he completed the design at the top.

The differential wear on the very lowest blocks, which are sandstone, suggests to me that these at least may be original, and lend credibility to the idea of a running scroll on the original jambs. The 'marigold' is an early feature which would not be out of place in an early church (see for example Hexham, Northumberland: Cramp 1984, pls. 178.944, 179.955, 182.972), and we have a surviving fragment of sculpture in this church with a flower-like cross formed from four leaves (Ledsham 1 above, Ill. 469), a possibly related motif, as well as the stylised flower forms on the imposts of the chancel arch and its connecting frieze (Ledsham 5 below, Ills. 471–5). Happily the new photograph of Ledsham 3b (Ill. 468) shows the probable model for the three roundels with this motif in the centre top of the hood-mould, although there is no evidence for the double petal of the Latin cross element. The enclosing circle and the primacy of the four-petalled Latin cross are certainly present, however, and there is a possibility that the four diagonally-placed petals might have been scooped.

A nineteenth-century restoration of a seventh-to eighth-century doorway, with probable traces of the original decoration in the lowest blocks at ground level.

Browne 1884–8, lxvi; Allen 1891, 225, no. 3; Morris 1911, 334, and pl.; Glynne 1917a, 205–6; Brown 1925, 464; Mee 1941, 229, pl. facing 80; Pevsner 1959, 302, pl. 4a; Taylor, H. M. 1959, 147–9; Fisher 1962, 139; Taylor, H. M. 1965, 60; Taylor, H. M. and Taylor, J. 1965, I, 381; Pevsner 1967, 303, pl. 4a; Taylor, H. M. 1968c, 349; Taylor, H. M. 1978, 933, 1059; Bailey 1983, 6; Faull 1986a, 143–6, pl. XLIa–c; Jewell 1986, 99, pl. XLIVb; Butler 1987, 199–202, pl. XLVIIIb; Ryder 1993, 15, 165, ill. 18

[1] The following are general references to the Ledsham stones: (–––) 1871a, 853; Bogg 1904, 130, and pl.; Collingwood 1915a, 209, 287; Glynne 1917a, 206; Brown 1925, 464; Pontefract and Hartley [1936], 57; Mee 1941, 229; Pevsner 1959, 303; Taylor and Taylor 1965, I, 378–84; Faull 1981, 212; Cramp 1986, 102, 104; Faull 1986a, 143–7; pl. XLIIa–b; Butler 1987, 199–203, figs. 1–2; Ryder 1993, 15, 165.