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IV. The Anglo-Saxon Friezes at Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

R. H. I. Jewell
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Extract

Let into various walls inside the church of St. Mary and St. Hardulph at Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire, is a group of frieze sculpture and relief-carved panels. It is now generally accepted that these are of Anglo-Saxon origin, and have been reused in the present church, of which no part is earlier than the twelfth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 108 , 1986 , pp. 95 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1986

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References

Notes

1 Nichols, J., ‘Additional collections towards the history and antiquities of the town and county of Leicestershire’, Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica, viii (London, 1790)Google Scholar; id., History and Antiquities of the County of Leicestershire, iii, pt. a: West Goscote Hundred (London, 1804).Google Scholar

2 cf. Chatwin, P. B., ‘Breedon Church’, Arch. J. lxxi (1914), 394–7Google Scholar: ‘late Norman’. This article, especially useful for its architectural history of Breedon Church, includes some of the earliest published photographs of the sculpture.

3 In Dornier, A. (ed.), Mercian Studies (Leicester, 1977), pp. 191–233.Google Scholar

4 Jope, E. M., ‘The Saxon building stone industry in southern and midland England’, Med. Arch. viii (1964), 100Google Scholar; Parsons, D., ‘A note on the Breedon angel’, Trans. Leics. Arch. & Hist. Soc. li (1975–1976), 40–3, at p. 41.Google Scholar

5 The well-known small panel with two figures holding wands whose foliate terminals are exactly paralleled in the friezes (Clapham, A. W., ‘The carved stones at Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire, and their position in the history of English art’, Archaeologia, lxxvii (1928), 219–40, no. 13, pl. xxxiv, 5).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Ibid., 229, pl. xxxii, 4.

7 The gaps beside the beam-ends resting on the blocks in the tower make it possible to obtain a rough idea of their depth, by inserting a ruler.

8 Clapham, op. cit. (note 5), 229.

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10 Dalton, O. M., Byzantine Art and Archaeology (Oxford, 1911), p. 585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Kendrick, A. F., Victoria and Albert Museum, Catalogue of Textiles from Burying-Grounds in Egypt, iii (1922), e.g. nos. 795 (pl. 24), 800 (pl. 22), 808 (pl. 25).Google Scholar

12 Hubert, J., Porcher, J. and Volbach, W. F., Europe in the Dark Ages (London, 1969), pp. 218–21.Google Scholar

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18 Clapham, op. cit. (note 5), no. 30, pl. xxiv, 4.

19 Verzone, op. cit. (note 9), pp. 142–4.

20 Hubert, J., Porcher, J. and Volbach, W. F., L'Empire carolingien (Paris, 1968), no. 271.Google Scholar

21 cf. those on a small column and a terracotta cornice fragment in the Museo Cristiano: Corpus della Scultura Altomedievale, iii (Panazza, G. and Tagliaferri, A., La Diocesi d Brescia (Spoleto, 1966)), nos. 93 (fig. 90) and 141 (fig. 140).Google Scholar Panazza dates both as ninth-century; the latter has also been dated c. 800 (Braunfels, W. and Schnitzler, H. (eds.), Karl der Grosse (Dusseldorf, 1965), p. 447, no. 606).Google Scholar

22 L'Orange and Torp, op. cit. (note 17), pt. 1, pl. cliva; pt. 2, 136 f.

23 Koehler, op. cit. (note 14), pl. 9d(Godescalc Pericopes) and pl. 31c (Dagulf Psalter) (the scroll occupying the left half of the top border).

24 Henry, F., The Book of Kells (London, 1974), pl. 3 (between the left end-volutes of the scroll on the arch over the canon tables).Google Scholar

25 Creswell, K. A. C., Early Muslim Architecture (Oxford, 1932), pl. 25d.Google Scholar On a smaller scale, a similar motif is seen in the inhabited scroll on a sixth-century Byzantine gold bracelet in the British Museum (Dalton, op. cit. (note 10), p. 541; fig. 326).

26 Creswell, op. cit. (note 25), pl. 23c and e.

27 Corpus della Scultura Altomedievale, viii (Serra, J. R., La Diocesi di Alto Lazio (Spoleto, 1974))Google Scholar, no. 180 (figs. 210–14). Mathhiae, G. suggests a date in the papacy of Hadrian I, at the end of the eighth century (‘La iconostasi della chiesa di S. Leone a Capena’, Boll. d'Arte, xxxvii (1952), 293–9, at 299)Google Scholar; this would tie in closely with that of the Breedon scroll. Kautzsch, R. suggests a ninth-century date, after the papacy of Nicholas I (856–67): ‘Die römische Schmuck-kunst in Stein vom 6. bis zum 10. Jahrhundert’, Röm. Jahrb. für Kunstgeschichte, iii (1939), 37.Google Scholar

28 A short length of vine scroll with leaves and a grape-bunch of the same type is seen on a reused fragment in S. Andrea, Ronciglione, also in the diocese of the Alto Lazio (Corpus, viii, op. cit. (note 27), no. 272, pl. 98).

29 Cramp, R., ‘The position of the Otley crosses in English sculpture of the eighth to ninth centuries’, in Milojčić, V.- (ed.), Kolloquium über spätantike und frühmittelalterliche Skulptur, 11 (Mainz, 1970), pp. 53–6, pls. 42–3 (Otley I, c. 780–800).Google Scholar

30 Ibid., p. 62, where Easby is dated, by inference, to the first decade of the ninth century.

31 Brown, G. Baldwin (The Arts in Early England, 11: Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 2nd edn. (London, 1925), p. 464) compared it with the scrolls on the Deerhurst font (early tenth-century), but dated the doorway to the mid-later eleventh century (C3).Google Scholar

32 Collingwood, W. G., ‘Anglian and Anglo-Danish sculpture in the North Riding of Yorkshire’, Yorks. Arch. J. xix (1907), 267–413, at pp. 338–43, fig.Google Scholar; id., Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age (London, 1927), p. 109.*******************************Google Scholar

33 Costa, D., Nantes, Musée Th. Dobrée, Art Merovingien, Inventaire des Coll. Publiques Françaises, 10 (Paris, 1964), nos. 124–70, esp. 125, 164.Google Scholar

34 Peroni, A., ‘Gli stucchi decorativi della Basilica di San Salvatore in Brescia’, in Milojčić, op. cit. (note 29), I (1968), pp. 25–45. pl. 36.Google Scholar

35 Schlunk, H. and Hauschild, T., Hispania Antiqua, 1: Denkmäler der frühchristliche und westgotische Zeit (Mainz, 1978), pp. 218–20Google Scholar, pls. 122a, 123b (S. Comba de Bande) and pp. 223–7, pl. 129 (S. Pedro de la Nave).

36 Grabar, A., Sculptures byzantines de Constantinople, IV-Xe siècle (Paris, 1963), p. 94, pl. xxxix, 4.Google Scholar

37 Glück, H., Die christliche Kunst des Ostens (Berlin, 1923), pl. 27.Google Scholar

38 Trans. Leics. Arch. & Architect. Soc. n.s. xx (1938–1939), xii.Google Scholar

39 Chatwin, op. cit. (note 2), 396.

40 T. D. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 15), p. 186, pl. 80.

41 Zimmermann, op cit. (note 13), iv, pls. 292, 285c.

42 Corpus della Scultura Altomedievale, vii, 1 (Ermini, L. P., La Diocesi di Roma, la IV regioni ecclesiastica, (Spoleto 1974)). no. 32, pl. xi.Google Scholar

43 cf. also the initial Q in Bibl. Nat. lat 281, f. 137a, part of the same manuscript.

44 Beckwith, J., Ivory Carvings in Early Medieval England (London, 1972)Google Scholar, no. 8. A. Goldschmidt's attribution of this ivory to Tours seems to have no real basis: Die Elfenbein-skulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingischen und sachsischen Kaiser, I (Berlin, 1914), no. 179.Google Scholar

45 Beckwith, op. cit. (note 44), no. 9 (‘Anglo-Saxon, late eighth century’). Goldschmidt ascribes it to Tours: op. cit. (note 44), no. 180.

46 Wulff, O. and Volbach, W. F., Spätantike und koptische Stoffe aus ägyptischen Grabfunden in der Staatlichen Museum K.F.M.‖Ägyptisches Museum, Schliemann Sammlung (Berlin, 1926), no. 6729, pl. 69.Google Scholar

47 Clapham, op. cit. (note 5), 231, pl. 36.

48 Collingwood 1927, op. cit. (note 32), fig. 56.

49 An early instance of such non-barbaric quadrupeds appearing in south English art is afforded by the Stockholm Codex Aureus, f. 11a (Zimmermann, op. cit. (note 13), iv, pl. 284). The animals above and below the ‘PI’of the monogram, and between the ‘U’and ‘T’of ‘AUTEM’ are very like the Easby beasts; and the birds in the ‘E’ are also paralleled closely on the cross-shaft.

50 Koehler, op. cit. (note 14), pl. 68.

51 cf. Wulff and Volbach, op. cit. (note 46), no. 6233, pl. 71.

52 Volbach, W. F., Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike und des früken Mittelalters, 3rd edn. (Mainz, 1976), no. 82.Google Scholar

53 The closest parallels for the foliage are seen in the large sixth-century ivory panels in the pulpit of Henry II in Aachen Palace chapel (ibid., nos. 72–77, pls. 41–44); the Ascension scene must also have had an Eastern model, and in iconographical terms compares closely with the lower half of the miniature of the same subject in the Syriac Rabbula Gospels, of 586 (Weitzmann, K., Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination (London, 1977), p. 101Google Scholar, pl. 36), and a fresco, also dating from the sixth century, from the apse of chapel XVII at Bawit in Egypt, now in the Coptic Muṣẹum, Old Cairo (Zaloscer, H., Die Kunst im christlichen Agypten (Munich, 1974), pp. 152–3).Google Scholar

54 T. D. Kendrick, op. cit., (note 15), pl. lxiv.

55 Kendrick, A. F., op. cit. (note 11), 1 (1920), no. 80.Google Scholar

56 Volbach, op. cit. (note 52), no. 60, pl. 32; see also no. 58, pl. 31, a diptych of c. 400, in the Louvre.

57 Grabar, op. cit. (note 36), pl. xxii, 3.

58 Collingwood 1927, op. cit. (note 32), p. 135 (‘Xla?’), fig. 152.

59 Allen, J. Romilly, The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1903), pt. 2, p. 413.Google Scholar

60 Although cf. a contemporary British imitation (Coll. Mr. Clarke, the Olde Curiosity Shoppe, Guildford (Jan. 1984)) of a coin of Decentius (351–53) where the victorious horseman on the reverse is given a pair of wings, absent from the original.

61 cf. A. F. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 11), 1, no. 69.

62 T. D. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 15), p. 172.

63 Romilly Allen, op. cit. (note 59), pt. 2, no. 694, p. 274.

64 Zimmermann, op. cit. (note 13), iv, pl. 286b.

65 T. D. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 15), pp. 211–14, pl. c.

66 For related patterns see Romilly Allen, op. cit. (note 59), pt. 2, nos. 557–60.

67 M. and Paor, L. De, Early Christian Ireland (London, 1958), figs. 22–3.Google Scholar

68 Wilson, D. M., Anglo-Saxon Ornamental Metalwork, 700–1100, in the British Museum (London, 1964), pp. 18 f., pl. iic. The interlace quadrant on one of the Witham pin-heads (T. D. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 15), pl. lxxi) is of a comparable type.Google Scholar

69 Romilly Allen, op. cit. (note 59), pt. 2, p. 342, no. 933.

70 J. Porcher, ‘La peinture provincielle’, in Braunfels and Schnitzler, op. cit. (note 21), iii, pp. 54–73, fig. 12.

71 Lasko, P., Ars Sacra 800–1200 (Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 13; Beckwith (op. cit. (note 44), no. 3) considers it Northumbrian.Google Scholar

72 e.g. on a slab at St. Colme's Abbey on the Isle of Incholm (Firth of Forth): Romilly Allen, op. cit. (note 59), pt. 3, fig. 384.

73 Romilly Allen illustrates only one closely related pattern (ibid., pt. 2, no. 951), with a complete swastika connected to the rest of the design only at its extremities, as at Breedon. But this is later and less complex, the swastika being formed of much thicker crossed strands.

74 T. D. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 15), p. 135.

75 Koehler, op. cit. (note 14), pl. 47.

76 Zimmermann, op. cit. (note 13), iv, pl. 323b.

77 On the blocks formerly in the east face of the chancel buttresses, now inside the chancel; Clapham, op. cit. (note 5), 227, pl. XL, 2 and 4. The delicate and whimsical Anglian ornament of the Fletton frieze has little in common with Breedon.

78 cf. Clapham, op. cit. (note 5), pl. xxxvii, 1: a late fourth- or early fifth-century panel in S. Agnese fuori le Mura, Rome; also P. Deschamps, ‘Un motif de décoration carolingienne et ses transformations à 1'époque romane’, Bull. Mon. 1921, 254–66, fig. 2, a marble block from the Merovingian cathedral at Nantes; and fig. 12, the archivolt of the twelfth-century west portal of Piacenza Cathedral, whose ornament includes a band of deeply cupped peltae, very like the Breedon carving.

79 Koehler, op. cit. (note 14), pl. 31a. Closely comparable ornament appears in the arch over the St. Matthew portrait in the Abbeville and Soissons Gospels, f. 17b: ibid., pls. 38a and 81.

80 Brown, G.Baldwin, The Arts in Early England, VI, pt. 2: Anglo-Saxon Sculpture (London, 1937), pp. 181 f., pl. XLVIII; T. D. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 15), p. 171.Google Scholar

81 Zimmermann, op. cit. (note 13), III, pl. 209d.

82 Abbott, R., ‘Some recently discovered Anglo-Saxon carvings at Breedon-on-the-Hill’( Trans. Leics. Arch. & Hist. Soc. xxxix (1963), 20–3, at p. 23, pl. IIIb.Google Scholar

83 Schlunk and Hauschild, op. cit. (note 35), pl. 133b and c.

84 Zimmermann, op. cit. (note 13), IV, pl. 284; in particular the hound between the T and E of ‘AUTEM’.

85 Ibid., pl. 290; the hounds in the spaces under the arches are arranged in two confronted pairs in the same horizontal line, as at Breedon.

86 A. F. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 11), 1, no. 71.

87 Kitzinger, E., ‘Stylistic developments in pavement mosaics in the Greek East from the age of Constantine to the age of Justinian’, La Mosaïque gréco-romaine, Coll. Int. du C.N.R.S. (Paris, 1965), pp. 341–52. fig. 9. 88 A. F. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 11), iii, nos. 822–3, pl. xxvii.Google Scholar

89 Lasko, P., The Kingdom of the Franks (London, 1971), pp. 81–3.Google Scholar

90 Hubert, Porcher and Volbach, op. cit. (note 12), pp. 273–5, fig. 301. ‘Its verve and frankly realistic presentation of horse and rider have exact parallels in certain works of late antiquity’.

91 Porcher, J., ‘L'Evangeliaire de Charlemagne et le Psautier d'Amiens’, Revue des Arts, vii (1957), 50–8, at p. 57.Google Scholar

92 Cramp, op. cit. (note 3), fig. 60c, p. 223.

93 T. D. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 15), p. 164.

94 Koehler, op. cit. (note 14), pls. 52 and 70; E. Rosenbaum, ‘The vine columns of Old St. Peter's in Carolingian canon tables’, J. Warburg & Courtauld Institutes, xviii (1955). 1–16, at 1–3, pl. 1. T h e figures in Harley f. 11b, which seem to crawl up the vine stems on hands and knees, are particularly similar.Google Scholar

95 Strong, D., Roman Art (Harmondsworth, 1976), pls. XLVII and XLIX.Google Scholar

96 In Leicester Museum: Brøndsted, J., Early English Ornament (London and Copenhagen, 1924), p. 159Google Scholar; Fox, C., ‘Two Anglo-Saxon bone carvings’, Antiq. J. xiii (1933), 303–5Google Scholar, pl. L, fig. 1: I am grateful to Jeffrey West for informing me of this reference. The girdle-end is now held to be a tenth-century piece.

97 Brown, G.Baldwin, The Arts in Early England, v: The Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses … (London, 1921), p. 327; T. D. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 15), p. 151.Google Scholar

98 Henry, op. cit. (note 24), pl. 15. T h e plants, which may be of Syrian origin (cf. the Rabbula Gospels, f. 12a) appear as runovers in the text.

99 Koehler, op. cit. (note 14), pl. 59; inner border, top left.

100 Strong, op. cit. (note 95), fig. 168.

101 T. D. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 15), p. 173.

102 T h e long-eared, thin-snouted head and three-toed paws of one of the quadrupeds find a surprisingly close parallel in the hound on the Horseman ivory in the Aachen pulpit (Volbach, op. cit. (note 52), no. 77).

103 On f. 71 (Zimmermann, op. cit. (note13), iv, pl. 298) is seen a pair of long-necked quadrupeds with raised front paws; note in particular the ridged manes, and the head of the one on the right, with forward-pointing ears, closely comparable with the second beast from the left on the right-hand block; also the waving plant stem, with ribbed base, behind the animals. Larger groups of paired beasts arranged horizontally, accompanied by similar plants tipped with pointed leaves, appear on, e.g., ff. 19a, 21a (ibid., pls. 304, 307).

Cinčk, J. G., Anglo-Saxon and Slovak-Avar Patterns of Cuthbert's Gospels, Ser. Cyrilomethodiana 1 (Cleveland, 1958), dated the Gospels c. 800–10, and suggested that they were written and illuminated in the Salzburg area by a scribe who had Avaric objects at his disposal, which influenced the manuscript's ornament.Google Scholar

104 But cf. the symmetrical pairs of dogs on the column bases of f. 30b of the Vespasian Psalter (Wright, D. H. (ed.), The Vespasian Psalter (Copenhagen, 1967), p. 67 and frontis.), which, although not fighting, offer a parallel in their ‘conceits of tail-biting and mutual ear-scratching’.Google Scholar

105 Grabar, op. cit. (note 36), pis. xxii–iv.

106 cf. the sarcophagus (third- to fourth-century) in S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura, Rome (Cechelli, C., La cattedra di Massimiano (Rome, 1944), p. 80, fig.).Google Scholar

107 Henry, op. cit. (note 24), pl. 63.

108 Zimmermann, op. cit. (note 13), iii, pl. 270.

109 Wright, op. cit. (note 104), p. 67, pl. ic.

110 Weitzmann, K., ‘The iconography of the Carolingian Ivories of the Throne’, in Maccarrone, M. (ed.), La cattedra lignea di S. Pietro in Vaticano (Rome, 1971), p. 234; cf. pl. XXVII, 2.Google Scholar

111 Wright, op. cit. (note 104), p. 67, pl. iig.

112 See note 106.

113 Schlunk and Hauschild, op. cit. (note 35), pl. 151.

114 Nichols 1804, op. cit. (note 1), p. 688, pl. xcii.

115 e.g. Glück, op. cit. (note 37), pl. 24.

116 A. F. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 11), iii, no. 807.

117 Routh, T. E., ‘A corpus of the pre-Conquest stones of Derbyshire’, J. Derbys. Arch. & Nat. Hist. Soc. xi (1937), 1–46, at pp. 32–4, pl. 16, A, B, C.Google Scholar

118 Collingwood 1927, op. cit. (note 32), fig. 28 (reconstruction); Cramp, R., The Monastic Arts of Northumbria, exhibition catalogue (Hexham, 1967), no. 40.Google Scholar

119 cf. note 94.

120 cf. in particular the Bamberg Bible, f. 7 (Koehler, W., Die karolingische Miniaturen, 1: Die Schüle von Tours (Berlin, 1930). pl. 56a).Google Scholar

121 Cumont, F., Fouilles de Doura-Europos (1922–1923) (Paris, 1926), pp. 226–38, pls. LXXXVI–VII.Google Scholar

122 e.g. one in the Archaeological Museum, Istanbul, where the birds have similarly bulbous bodies.

123 Beckwith, op. cit. (note 44), fig. 10.

124 A. F. Kendrick, op. cit. (note 11), i, no. 144.

125 Kitzinger, E., ‘The Horse and Lion tapestry at Dumbarton Oaks’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, iii (1946), 1 ff., fig. 48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

126 The apparent use of sixth-century models, already around 300 years old when the Breedon sculpture and such objects as the Munich ivory were carved, begs the question, were the Eastern models used in the West in the eighth to ninth centuries actually this old, or were there perhaps workshops in the Christian East which had preserved the tradition and style of late antique/early Byzantine inhabited scroll ornament into the eighth century?

127 T. D. Kendrick (op. cit. (note 15), p. 156, n. 4) observed that the interlace panel on the Rothbury shaft ‘has its exact counterpart in … the Armagh Gospels, dated 807’ (by Zimmermann, op. cit. (note 18), ii, p. 207).

128 cf. Friend, A. M., ‘The canon tables of the Book of Kells’, Medieval Studies in Memory of A. Kingsley Porter (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), 11, pp. 525 f.Google Scholar

129 Clapham, op. cit. (note 5), 223, no. 26: ‘double 13th-century head-corbel cut on butt end of stone and destroying part of interlace-panel.’

130 Keary, C. F., A Catalogue of English Coins in the British Museum, ed. Poole, R. S., Anglo-Saxon Series, 1 (London, 1887), p. 25, nos. 7, 8, pl. V, 1, 2.Google Scholar

131 Blunt, C. E., ‘The coinage of Offa’ in Dolley, R. H. M. (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Coins (London, 1961); see nos. 42 and 49, pl. v, for similar examples.Google Scholar

132 Cramp, op. cit. (note 3), p. 207.

133 e.g. f. 5a (Zimmermann, op. cit. (note 13), iv, pl. 291a).

134 Romilly Allen, op. cit. (note 59), pt. 3, p. 317, fig. 331.

135 Probably too little survives in northern England for us to conclude that Breedon was not derived from a Northumbrian frieze type. Certainly, there was an early tradition of sculptured friezes or string-courses; late seventh-century examples at Hexham and Monkwearmouth were carved with animals, the former recognizably of Italo-Byzantine origin; also at Hexham, late seventh-century string-course fragments are carved with balusters of Roman type, simple zoomorphic plaitwork of a sort found at the Hypogeum in Poitiers, and coiled snakes. For the Monkwearmouth string-course see The Reliquary, n.s. viii (1983), 145; for the Hexham fragments, Collingwood 1927, op. tit. (note 32), fig. 33. Cramp, op. tit. (note 118), nos. 41–2.Google Scholar

136 The imposts on the eastern arch of the crossing in S. Pedro de la Nave bear human masks on their ends, but these are in low relief and contained within scrolls. One of the Hexham animal-frieze fragments (ibid., no. 42) has a geometrically carved projecting terminal; Professor Cramp sees this block as an ‘impost, possibly for the column of an arch’, and thinks that the Breedon blocks could be the same.

137 For a different view, see , J. and Taylor, H. M., ‘Architectural sculpture in pre-Norman England’, J.B.A A. xxix (1966), 3–51, at pp. 30–31: ‘We think that careful thought needs to be given to the possibility that the main walls of the present church, above the thirteenth-century pointed arcades, are indeed survivals from an aisleless church of the eighth century and that the sections of sculptural string-course in the present spandrels of these arcades are still in situ.’ The arguments which follow in favour of this proposition are open to criticism. The carvings in the main walls are not in ‘uniformly good condition’. It is not hard to imagine a Norman or Gothic builder reusing earlier carvings in an ornamental fashion; as well as the frieze sections in the (Norman) tower and (Gothic) south porch at Breedon, Fletton church furnishes a good example of such a reuse in a Norman context with its ninth-century frieze carvings until recently conspicuously displayed in the north- and south-east buttresses.Google Scholar

The blocks between the arches are generally complete and give every indication of having been arranged so as to fit into their allocated spaces without being cut down. The assertion that the pointed arches were cut through pre-existing solid walls when the friezes were in situ is proved wrong by the obviously incorrect ornamental sequence of the blocks—including the pelta, which is also upside-down (cf. p. 23)—as well as by the lack of damage to most of them, which would not have been possible had the arches been indiscriminately hacked through a continuous frieze. The present arrangement of the blocks probably dates from the thirteenth century, when the aisleless Norman nave eastwards of the tower was entirely rebuilt as the priors' section of a large new church, of which the parochial nave to the west of the tower has now disappeared (Chatwin, op. cit. (note 2)).

138 Mundell, M., ‘Deir Za'Feran’, unpublished M.A. dissertation, University of London, 1975.Google Scholar

139 Strzygowski, J., Kleinasien, ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte (Leipzig, 1903), fig. 38.Google Scholar

140 Krautheimer, R., Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 234, pl. 131, A.Google Scholar

141 But the possibility that they were placed at a lower level, as on Monkwearmouth porch, on the Torhalle at Lorsch, or indeed at Quintanilla de las Viñas, Skripou and Aght'amar, where friezes are used at more than one level, cannot be ruled out.

142 Taylor, H. M., Anglo-Saxon Architecture, III (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 1031–4 (table of nave dimensions, p. 1033).Google Scholar

143 cf. the chapels of St. Patrick at Heysham (Lanes.) and Odda at Deerhurst (Glos.), which accompany larger Anglo-Saxon churches, and have internal lengths of 26 ft. and 25 ft. 6 in. (7.92 and 7.77 m.) respectively.