Beast and interlace panel, C8th
/Beast and interlace panel
8th century
June 18, 1973
Pre-Conquest sculpture is so rare in Kent, as in the south-east of England generally, that it is worth while drawing attention to the existence of any piece, however small. The fragment had apparently been used as rubble for the plinth of the later Norman cathedral at Rochester. It was found during work to underpin the west front of the cathedral in 1888-9, during the course of which the foundations of the apsidal end of an earlier Saxon structure were revealed.1
The fragment is of a limestone slab now measuring about 12 1/2 by 7 1/2 in., and a little over 4 in. thick. The back is only rough-hewn. The slab is broken on three sides, with only one straight edge remaining.
It has all the appearance of a piece of architectural sculpture rather than the fragment of a cross shaft. The 'exterior' face is carved in shallow relief, the deepest part (below the belly of the beast) no more than 1/3 in. deep. The ornament was set out in rectangular panels within an outer border marked off by no more than a lightly incised line.
Parts of two panels survive: the right-hand containing the remains of a rough plait or interlace, and the left-hand the narrow hind-quarters of an elegant, stylized beast, its tail twisted over the back and round the belly. Although now in so sad a condition, the design seems to have been competently handled. But its style and relationships are difficult to assess both on account of its fragmentary nature and because the vast majority of comparative material comes from far away in the Anglian north. Possibly the panel would not be out of place at any date from the eighth to the tenth centuries, but probably it belongs to the later rather than earlier part of that period. Animal ornament and interlace are not infrequently found occupying contiguous rectangular panels in pre-Conquest art in most media and in most centuries. The Rochester interlace might be considered similar to that on the slab from St. Augustine's, Canterbury,2 while the beast panel perhaps shares something in common with 'lion'-panels at Breedon or Whitby.3
But the overall parallel which comes most readily to mind takes the form of a small sandstone slab now built into the doorway of Wamphray church in Dumfriesshire, bearing a similar bipartite design, albeit with distinctively early northern features.4
Remains of only relatively few free-standing Saxon stone crosses survive in south-east England, although such documentary evidence as exists suggests that they were found as early in southern England as in the north, while the wartime discovery of the remarkable All Hallows fragments attests to the existence of an important late-Saxon 'London school' of sculpture at least as sophisticated as any in the north.5 On the other hand, the lists of survivals in sit suggest that architectural sculpture was equally common in all parts of the country. The reasons for the general absence of cross-sculptures in south-east England are not yet clear. But it is plain that unless some special characteristic may have caused it to be preserved--such as the incorporation of a crucifixion--purely architectural sculptures will normally have been reduced to rubble when the buildings of which they formed part were deemed to be outmoded. Whereupon they must often have formed part of the rubble needed for subsequent structures, only coming to light during the course of later restoration or destruction. By the time of the first Norman building at Rochester, the Saxon church was acknowledged to be in an advanced state of dilapidation.7
Saxon buildings in Kent seem normally to have used stone quarried locally, or acquired at second hand from nearby Roman sites. The Rochester stone is not local to Kent. It is a clean-washed, shelly, oolitic limestone with a sparry matrix, which almost certainly came from some part of the Jurassic Ridge of central England. Professor Jope has drawn attention to the very extensive use of this material, from quarries probably at Barnack and elsewhere, throughout the Saxon period.8
Since its discovery, the Rochester fragment has apparently lain loose in the cathedral crypt. The broken edges seem recently to have been further bruised.
M. J. Swanton
Footnotes
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1 G. M. Livett. ‘Foundations of the Saxon Cathedral Church at Rochester’, Arch. Cant., xviii (1889), 267 n.
2 C. R. Peers and A. W. Clapham, 'St. Augustine's Abbey Church, Canterbury, before the Norman Conquest', Archaeologia, Ixxvii (1927), pl. xxviii.
3 A. W. Clapham, 'The Carved Stones at Breedon on the Hill, Leicestershire, and their position in the history of English Art', Archaeologia, Ixxvii (1927), Pl. xxxiv (3); C. Peers and C. A. Ralogh Radford, 'The Saxon Monastery at Whitby', Archaeologia, Ixxxix (1943), 35, pl. xx (b).
4 J. Romilly Allen and J. Anderson, The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1903, i, 449-50, fig. 470; illustrated also by N. Aberg, The Occident and the Orient in the Art of the seventh Century, I, The British Isles, Stockholm, 1943, fig. 44.
5 T. D. Kendrick and C. A. Ralogh Radford, 'Recent Discoveries at All Hallows, Barking', Antiq. Journ., xxiii (1943), 14-18.
6 J. and E. M. Tavior, "Architectural Sculpture in pre-Norman England', J.B.A.A., 3rd series, xxix (1966), 3-51.
7 ‘paene vetustate dirutam’, Textus Roffensis, ed. T. Hearne, Oxford, 1720, 142; and cf. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, Rolls Series, LIII, 136-7.
8 E. M. Jope, ‘The Saxon Building-Stone Industry in Southern and Midland England’, Med. Arch., viii (1964), 91-118.
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