Mercian Migrant Dr Christina Smith The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture (CASSS) Megan Henvey Dr Meg Boulton Heidi Stoner Yes, we are working on our new web interface with the Archaeology Data Service which will enable free searching and download of all data. We are aiming for a late 2024 launch.

The Lowther 06 #hogback . Captured via #3d #photogrammetry a few days ago. Some unusual carvings on this one according to The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture (CASSS)! Some nice tegulation still remains #earlymediaeval #viking The Govan Stones ⚔🛡👑

The author of these tweets is giving a talk featuring a lot of Corpus Vol I material. Come hear about the recently-excavated fragments and how they speak to changing ideas about Lindisfarne's post-AD 793 story!

Join Dr Meg Boulton, Carolyn Twomey, Jill Hamilton Clements and myself in a three-part series, Carving Collective Practice: Working Against Monolithic Scholarship on Stone at @ IONA 2024.

Call for participation for Session III, Thinking with Stone, below. forms.gle/gvqA1juADbjQaj…

The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture (CASSS) Columns at St Wystan's Church, Repton

The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture (CASSS) Can’t beat a hog back in my opinion! There are some glorious ones at Brompton near Northallerton.

Happy Valentine's Day! What do you love ❤️ about #earlymedieval stone sculpture? Do you have a favourite fragment or monument?

In addition to the early lathe-turned baluster fragment, St Augustine's, Canterbury, also offers architectural components spanning the early medieval period. Here are some fragments of 9th c capitals and two 10th/11th c balusters.

A late 7th c date for these & related pieces comes from the fact that 4 of the Wearmouth examples are in situ in the west porch of St Peter's church Bede Wearmouth (Cramp 1984: 120-1). This porch is generally considered part of the first church on site, founded AD 674.

Indeed St Paul's, Jarrow (Co. Durham) boasts 25 such examples. Its twin foundation at Wearmouth preserves another 30(!) of these early medieval baluster fragments.

How does one date relatively plain architectural components? The lack of a taper plus the use of narrow grooving aren't features of late Anglo-Saxon balusters in the region. They are, however, diagnostic of lathe-turned balusters from late 7th c Northumbria (think Bede's world).

A number of baluster fragments are associated with the site. Here's one piece, removed from a 19th c boundary wall of old County Hospital's mortuary (overlying the south side of St Augustine's abbey church).

Good morning! 👋 More sculptured architectural fragments today. We're leaving Derbyshire and venturing 🚗south to St Augustine's, Canterbury (Kent).

Biddle reminds that while Wigstan's remains were removed to safety when Vikings threatened Repton (AD 873-4), his body was later returned. It was there in the 11th c when Cnut decided to translate the remains to Evesham, sometime before 1035.

Seen in the context of major rebuilding at Repton (cf. the whole eastern part of the church), were these symbolically-imbued columns specifically made to mark the burial place of murdered Wigstan, d. AD849 (again refer to Biddle 2018: 68)?

Copies of epigraphic texts were certainly carried from St Peter's and the catacombs (Story 2010). Biddle likewise argues that models of holy places, like St Peter's tomb, almost certainly survived in Mercian monasteries or royal houses, Repton (Derbys) among them.

We know that many Old English-speakers travelled from Britain to Italy. Benedict Biscop, for example, brought back books, other artworks, artefacts, and even people (John the Archcantor) to the Northumbrian monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow, Bede tells us.

The Repton columns are thus stylised versions of an exemplar. They are 'reduced to bare essentials of helical form emphasised by a climbing scroll', although Biddle argues that their specific arrangement of S- and Z-twists are 'carefully placed' (Biddle 2018: 66).

We see depictions of St Peter's tomb in Late Antique art. Here's an early 5th c ivory casket from Samagher, near Pola (Croatia). See the twisted columns around the tomb of Peter, as originally arranged. What other examples can you think of?

In the late 6th to early 7th century, the columns were rearranged to form a screen in front of the tomb. In the 8th c an additional layer of columns was built. Both rows would stand until 1507. (Vatican wall painting 'The Donation of Constantine', by followers of Raphael, 1520–4)