Capital

Posted on August 6, 2014 by JuliaH

I’m sitting here feeling slightly dazed – and perhaps it’s not surprising. I’ve just spent five hours in Wells Cathedral taking photographs (okay there was a pause for a very moorish ginger and chocolate tray bake which contained absolutely no calories what-so-ever and a cup of tea.) Aside from the scissor arch, the medieval crazy patchwork stained glass and the cathedral cat – a glorious and imperious ginger called Louis I spent an awful lot of time craning my neck for some capital shots.

A capital coming from the Latin capitulum meaning of the head refers to the top bit of a column – so it’s load bearing. A very nice guide even talked me through the different parts of a capital this morning. The very top of the capital is flat – that’s called the abacus. The abacus tends to be plain – though by the late Gothic masons were decorating them as well. Then comes the necking which thins to join the shaft of the column beneath it. Sometimes the necking runs straight into the column but more often than not there’s a thin moulding to separate the column from its capital.

It’s possible to tell the age of a capital in an English church by the kind of decoration on the necking. Norman capitals are solid and largely undecorated – those are the Romanesque ones. Having said that the Normans do decorate their capitals often with symmetrical patterning and rather chunky looking people if my memory serves me correctly.

In any event the next stage in the evolution of the capital involved foliage – in some cases foliage that looks rather like a tree drawn by a small child – one stem and one leaf in neat rows. Somehow the Gothic evolved out of the Romanesque so that by the thirteenth century masons were running riot carving sinuous leaves, green men, strange birds, beasts and odd little figures.

In Wells there are doves, dragons and lions as well as a fox running off with a goose in its mouth. The fox is being pursued around the capital by a very cross farmer. There’s a spoonbill swallowing a rather plump frog; a devil who has caught a fish; a pedlar with his pack and a string of beads; a man with terrible toothache; a cobbler; a man removing a thorn from his foot; a thief; assorted Old Testament types; someone being martyred and rather a lot of different kinds of leaves as well as a bewildering collection of heads peering down from their hiding places. The more you look the more that you see – English Gothic at its best – at least that’s what the very nice guide told me and I’m not going to disagree.

So next time you go to a church or cathedral if you’re not crawling around on your hands and knees attempting to photograph misericords without moving them or crossing any barriers that have been erected to keep the public at a safe distance you can vary your posture by standing on tip-toe developing a crick in your neck while trying to hold your camera steady in order to capture capitals.

Carved bench ends – a tale of elephants, men and a fox

Posted on July 9, 2014 by JuliaH

Dating from the same period as misericords, bench ends in churches across the country are often intriguing insights into the medieval world. The fox is in Burlingham Church in Norfolk and, yes, he is in pursuit of geese.

In Greystoke, Cumbria there are paired lions with their tongues sticking out and their bottoms sticking up as though they’re sliding down the bench into an undignified slump. There are also these barefoot, bearded men wearing something that looks remarkably like kilts.

Further south in Ripon Cathedral one bench end sports a startling elephant with a castle on its back.

In Devon its even possible to find bench ends carved their full length to include the carvers initials.

I wonder what modern carvers would create if there was a sudden trend for bench ends – safety-pinned goths, a besuited woman in high heels clutching a mobile phone and perhaps a bateria or virus magnified to grotesque proportions.

Misericords

Posted on July 4, 2014 by JuliaH

Misericords from the Latin word meaning pity are also known as ‘mercy seats’. These are the ledges or rests in choir stalls so that clergy singing the divine offices could rest their weary legs. The clerical perches were often hinged so the misericord carving could only be seen when the perch was raised. Many oak choir stalls with their misericords were placed in churches during the medieval period; their carvers are largely anonymous and the meaning behind the carvings sometimes lost but they remain a fascinating glimpse of the past.

Hemingborough in Yorkshire has some of the earliest examples of misericords in this country and Exeter Cathedral has a complete set dating from the Thirteenth Century.

The carvers used their imaginations when they created each misericord. Some scenes come from the Bible; others like the foliate green men sporting leaves from their mouths come from an earlier folklore; some images such as elephants come from medieval bestiaries. Hyenas were popular because not only were they an exotic species but they had legendary status as well according to Richard Hyman in that they were supposed to disinter and eat corpses…lovely. In addition they represented “vice feeding on corruption.” (Hyman: 21) Other inspirations came from everyday life; from animals realistic and fanciful and from mythical creatures such as mermaids. A carver in Fairford captured a woman raising a ladle to hit her unfortunate spouse . In Ludlow a man warms himself in front of his fire and in Manchester a game of backgammon can be spotted. Less amusingly in Lincoln a knight tumbles from his hours mortally injured.

Sometimes it is possible to spot a carver who has travelled around a locality. Greystoke Parish Church has some delightful misericords that are matched by similar examples in Dacre and also in Cartmel. Carlisle Cathedral has some impressive examples as does Hexham Abbey. Perhaps the man who carved them travelled from one church to the next in search of work.

Further south Ripon, Richmond and Chester have some intriguing misericords as does Wakefield, Halifax, Gloucester Cathedral, Worcester, Southwell Minster and Ludlow. In fact these lovely little works of art not only give an insight to medieval craftsmanship and mindset but they can also be alarmingly addictive…you’ve been warned and I’ve not even started on bench ends, corbels, capitals, grotesques and gargoyles.

This misericord from Cartmel depicts a rather alarming two-tailed mermaid with her mirror and comb. In medieval times a mermaid symbolised lust and temptation. I’m not sure that the Cartmel mermaid would tempt anyone with that ribcage!