Stories in Stone

Part 1 of my series on cushion and scallop capitals introduced these widespread and enduring features, and in this second part I will look at some ways in which the basic forms were varied and elaborated.

The first and commonest forms of elaboration affected the shields of the capital and the cones below them. The loose capital in the church of St Peter & St Paul, St Osyth (Essex), shown above, has sheathed cones, and elsewhere we might find wedges of various profiles or cylindrical rods between the cones.

Capitals at St Anselm’s Chapel, Chester Cathedral

Thus the vault respond capitals at Chester Cathedral shown above have triangular wedges between the cones, except for the left capital which has conical wedges. There is a limit to the visual stimulation to be gained from this sort of thing (although painting with bright colours would certainly have livened things up), but the shields themselves also offer opportunities for decoration. They can be recessed and framed in various ways, or relief ornament can be added to their semicircular fields.

Nave arcade capital at St Mary, Grendon (Northants)

The multi-scallop nave arcade capitals at St Mary, Grendon (Northants) are carved with several variations on this theme. The example shown here has half-daisies in the shields, and sheathed cones with wedges decorated with rows of nailhead between them.

Trefoil scallops

Beginning in the 1120s, a variation of the scallop capital called the trefoil, or trefoil scallop began to appear, arguably first at King Henry I’s foundation of Reading Abbey. The exact forms of these capitals vary enormously, but all are basically a kind of cushion capital with three-lobed shields

Trefoil scallop capital from Reading Abbey, now in Reading Museum and Art Gallery

The Reading trefoil capitals are among the most elegant and striking products of any Romanesque sculptural workshop; the forms of the capitals apparently growing organically from the octagonal shafts that supported them.  The form was widely copied…

Capital of the south doorway of All Saints, Pitsford (Northants)

… not always successfully.

Romanesque Mannerism

Romanesque architecture and sculpture is above all a rational system.  Whether we look at a nave elevation, a chancel arch, a doorway or a capital, each element stands in a logical relation to its neighbours. Each shaft of a multi-order doorway has its own capital and archivolt; each cone of a multi-scallop capital carries its own shield. But in the third quarter of the 12th century there are indications that some of the most accomplished sculptors – those working on important sites for wealthy patrons – began to pervert and play with the logic in a way that has parallels with the games that architects like Giulio Romano played with the classical elements at the Palazzo del Te. Which is why I label this exciting phase Romanesque Mannerism, and the opportunities for transgression offered by the logic of the scallop capital provided a rich field for this kind of experimentation.

One of the most fruitful sites for the student of Romanesque Mannerism is the Infirmary Hall at Ely Cathedral. The dating of this is disputed, but the best guess is that the building was completed before 1169, the latest date for the death of Archdeacon William who was carried there a few days before he died. A couple of examples might provide a taster of this aesthetic.

Slipped scallop capitals in the sanctuary of the infirmary at Ely Cathedral

In the sanctuary are capitals in which the shields of the scallop capitals appear to be slipping down the bell of the capital …

Hyphenated slipped scallop capital in the infirmary hall arcade at Ely Cathedral

… while in the hall arcade the same thing happens, but only to alternate shields, producing hyphenated slipped scallops.

Trumpet scallops

During what is usually called the Transition period between Romanesque and Gothic (c.1170-1200 in England) a variation of the scallop capital in which the cones flare outwards like trumpets first appeared.  I cannot say for certain where this motif first arrived, but it is commonly found alongside other transitional forms like waterleaf, and it seems fairly safe to date any examples after 1170.

Trumpet scallop capital on the south doorway of St Lawrence, Preston-on-Wye, Herefordshire

By 1220 trumpet scallops had practically disappeared from production. The nave arcades at Longparish (Hampshire) exemplify many transitional features in their capitals, including early stiff-leaf and trumpet scallops. The keeled cones of the latter are an indicator of late-stage transitional, and the arcades are usually dated to the first decade of the 13th century.

Keeled trumpet scallop capital at Longparish

Ely Cathedral north transept, west arcade capitals

Cushion capitals (also called cubic capitals) are normally described as capitals formed by the intersection of a cube and a sphere. They have a flat semicircular face, or ‘shield’, at the top of each side, and the curved triangular lower angles of the bell are all that remain of the spherical form. This kind of description is fine as far as it goes, but of course medieval capitals were never produced by combining geometrical forms, and in practice there is a continuum of forms between the Platonic ideal described above and a block-like form that has been rounded off at the corners and lower edges, and they are all called cushion capitals.  In some cases the shields don’t really appear at all, and capitals like this are often called ‘tectonic’.

A tectonic capital in the nave arcade of St Mary Magdalene, Ickleton (Cambridgeshire)

As well as variations in the way the block is shaped, special treatment may be applied to the angles, which might be keeled or tucked (removing the spherical element from the equation).

Cushion capital with keeled angles at St Mary, Ilmington (Warwickshire) – Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland

Cushion capital with angle tucks in the stone store at St John, Chester

It is normally assumed that Romanesque sculpture was painted, and cushion capitals have the advantage of a relatively large flat area, the shield, for the application of colour. Paint does not often survive, but a rare survival is at Copford (Essex), and although the polychromy has undoubtedly been refreshed many times it seems safe to assume that the decorative schemes we see today reflect the originals.  Copford uses both of the common early post-Conquest capital forms, the cushion and the volute, and the palette employed contains a rich mixture of reds, blues and earth colours.

Cushion capital from an apse window at St Michael, Copford (Essex)

A few of the Copford capitals are carved on their shields as well as painted, adding to the illusion.

A nave clerestorey window capital at Copford with both paint and relief carving

Cushion capitals appeared in England around the middle of the 11th century, but there are no  examples that are demonstrably pre-Conquest. The earliest appeared in southern England at Archbishop Lanfranc’s Canterbury Cathedral and in the crypts of Winchester and Worcester, and in the north at Jarrow in the later 1070s.  They were common in various parts of Europe before the Norman Conquest, but Normandy was not one of them. As we shall see, capitals in Norman France were usually of the volute type, whereas cushion capitals were common in Northern Italy, the Low Countries and Germany; a reminder that mid-11th century England had links with other parts of Europe than Normandy.

A cushion capital in the crypt of Speyer Cathedral, Germany (crypt consecrated 1041).

Photograph kindly supplied by Ralf Houven, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52773141

Scallop capitals are a development of the cushion in which the number of shields is increased to two (double scallop), three (triple scallop) or more (multi-scallop).  Another way of looking at it, found in some authors, is to consider the cushion capital as a form of scallop capital (single scallop) but this term is usually used to distinguish cushion capitals with angle tucks from other varieties.  It is worth noting that the varied group of ambulatory capitals at St John’s Chapel in William the Conqueror’s Tower of London (c.1080) includes both a cushion capital and a double scallop, suggesting that the development from the former to the latter was an early one.

A multi-scallop capital in the chancel arcade at St John the Baptist, Kingsthorpe (Northants)

In the second part of this post I will look at the rich variations in decorative forms found in cushion and scallop capitals, and especially the playful treatment of standard elements as a form of Romanesque Mannerism.

Waterleaf and flat leaf capitals are closely related forms that enjoyed a brief heyday in the last quarter of the 12th century in England. The simpler flat leaf capital has a concave bell bearing a broad flat leaf at each angle. The leaves have pointed tips above broad shoulders and taper down to a shared collar. Between each pair the gap has a rounded lower termination. The leaves themselves are usually keeled.  Waterleaf is similar except that the tips of the leaves are turned inwards. The rim of the bell of the capital is sometimes visible between the tips of the leaves.  While I am happy with this description I am also aware that pictures do the job much better:

A flat leaf capital at St Nicholas, Kennett (Cambridgeshire)

A waterleaf capital at St John the Baptist, Healaugh, West Riding. Copyright Rita Wood and the CRSBI.

Typically for transitional capitals there is a smooth transition from the slender shafts to the bell of the capital, interrupted by the necking.

The waterleaf design can be multiplied on wide arcade capitals

Repeated waterleaf designs on a nave arcade capital at All Saints, Ravenstone (Buckinghamshire)

The two forms can even form overlapping registers, as on the S doorway at Kenton (Suffolk).

S doorway capital at All Saint, Kenton (Suffolk)

The church of St Thomas at Ramsey (Huntingdonshire) is convincingly dated to the 1180s, and offers an insight into the possibilities of waterleaf and flat leaf designs. It will also be noted that keeled shafts and waterleaf often go together.

Variations of waterleaf in the Ramsey nave arcades

Before its appearance in England, waterleaf (feuille d’eau) was commonly found in mid-12th century French Cistercian abbeys such as Senanque (Vaucluse, founded 1148) and Silvacane (Bouches du Rhone, founded 1144), and from this context it reached Cistercian houses in England, notably Fountains Abbey (North Yorkshire) whence it was rapidly dispersed throughout the north of England.

Waterleaf cloister capitals at Senanque (Vaucluse). Creative Commons ‘Chapiteau en feuille d’eau. Auteur: Greudin’

At the same time, but probably independently, it appeared, not on capitals but on the bases of William of Sens’s work at Canterbury after the fire of 1174,. From here it spread to Kent, on similar bases at the ruined abbey of Lesnes, founded by Richard de Lucy in 1178, and Sussex, e.g. at New Shoreham in the late-12th century chancel arcading.  In fact it became so widespread in this country that there is probably no English county without waterleaf capitals. The map below shows the distribution of waterleaf capitals in England taken from the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture website. Gaps in the distribution of waterleaf capitals are likely to represent areas not yet recorded.

Distribution of waterleaf capitals in England according to the CRSBI website

A close reading of the Pevsner architectural guides suggests that the great man may have had had an alternative derivation for the motif in mind, based on a variation of the Romanesque volute capital in which the volutes spiral inwards instead of out as at St Michael’s in Toseland, but visually this seems a world away from the true waterleaf (as well as being at least 70 years earlier), and there is no evidence I can find of such a development playing out.

A volute capital on the chancel arch at Toseland (Huntingdonshire) said by Pevsner to foreshadow the waterleaf capital

Fonts and pillar piscinas

Capital forms are often used for Romanesque pillar piscina bowls (which are, after all, no more than hollowed-out capitals mounted on shafts), so it is not surprising to find waterleaf and flat leaf capitals used in this way, as at Lambourn (Berkshire). Fonts conceived as oversized capitals are rarer, and the short lifespan of this ornament makes waterleaf font bowls extremely unusual. I have only come across one in my own fieldwork: the rather heavily carved font at Great Wilbraham.

The waterleaf font at St Nicholas, Great Wilbraham (Cambridgeshire)

By 1200 the waterleaf had more or less died out, to be replaced by crocket and stiff-leaf forms, hence its presence suggests a date of c.1175-1200, and it is a useful diagnostic indicator for dating.

Waterleaf capitals have a simple elegance that marks a break from the rich complexity of forms that had gone before.  The idea that the motif is derived from the lotus seems unlikely since that plant is native to southern Asia and was introduced to Europe in 1787 as a stove house water lily by Joseph Banks. It would be surprising if it was intended to represent a specific plant at this date: naturalistic foliage did not begin to appear in Europe until the well into the 13th century at Reims and Naumburg. The term itself was first recorded in a will of 1444, referring to cushions decorated with ‘waterlefe’, although there is no way to know what kind of ornament was being described.  It was used by builders and architects by the later 18th century. The Builders Price Book of 1776 offers a ‘Gothic cornice, 2 members enriched with Water Leaf in Cove and Ovolo’, and from this time onwards it can be traced in an unbroken tradition from the works of architectural writers like Ruskin and Sir George Gilbert Scott.

Beakhead is the name usually given to a rich and varied collection of carved grotesque bird, animal and even human heads found in the architectural sculpture of the 12th century. The commonest form is the head of a bird with a long, curved beak that seems to grip a roll moulding in the order of an arch, but there are almost limitless variations on the type. At New Bradwell the birds’ heads alternate with cat-like heads with protruding tongues.

The reset doorway at New Bradwell (Bucks). In the inner order bird beakheads alternate with cat beakheads

On the arches of the west front of Lincoln cathedral, beastly human heads take the place of the birds, and highly decorated beards or protruding tongues lie across the angle rolls instead of beaks

Inventive beakheads at Lincoln Cathedral

There is another variety of this ornament, less common but generally found in combination with normal beakhead. In this type the head of a beast is on the inner curve of the arch, facing outwards, and pairs of leaves issue from its mouth, giving the appearance of a shuttlecock.

A beast head voussoir from the cloister of Reading Abbey

Further decoration is often carved between the leaves: a pine-cone, or sometimes a second head. In the surviving sculpture from Reading Abbey cloister, these beast heads alternate in the arches with the commoner bird beakhead type.

This Reading Abbey double springer supported arches to the left and right, with bird beakheads and beast heads alternating in each arch

At Tortington, West Sussex a similar arrangement can be seen on the chancel arch.

Alternating bird beakheads and beast heads on the chancel arch at Tortington (Sussex)

Beakheads appear in Romanesque sculpture in the British Isles, as well as in Anjou, Normandy and northern Spain. In Ireland there are examples of Romanesque arches decorated with heads, but not all are beakheads. Some of the finest Irish beakhead is found on the west doorway of the Nuns’ church at Clonmacnoise (Offaly), and it is unusual in that the roll clasped by the beasts’ heads is free-standing and gripped between their upper and lower jaws. This treatment of the ornament has parallels with continental beakhead like that at Saint-Fort-sur-Gironde (Charente-Maritime) rather than with English examples, which led George Zarnecki to suggest that the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella may have been an important factor in the introduction of the motif to Ireland.
On mainland Britain, beakhead is overwhelmingly English; there are no Welsh examples, and only one in Scotland – close to the English border at Kelso. Within England the distribution is extremely uneven. Beakhead is unknown or very scarce in Kent, Hertfordshire, Dorset, Lancashire, Bedfordshire, Northumberland, Shropshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Somerset and even Herefordshire, but in Yorkshire there are more than 50 sites with beakhead, and there are a further 40 in the area between the Chilterns and the Cotswolds, covering the counties of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Buckinghamshire. This suggests that just a few workshops of sculptors were responsible for the introduction of beakhead into England, and the evidence strongly suggests a connection with royal works carried out under King Henry I (1100-35).

Henry’s lands in Normandy were concentrated in the southern part of the Duchy, and in this region we find a kind of arch decoration that is closely related to beakhead. At Tavant (Indre et Loire) is a doorway whose arch is decorated with fluted leaves enclosing pine cones, similar to those seen among the fragments of Reading Abbey and on the doorway of the related church of Great Durnford (Wiltshire).

The pine-cone motif at Tavant (Indre-et-Loire)

The north doorway of Great Durnford, showing the “shuttlecock” motif

The spread of beakhead from Reading may also be linked to patronage around the court of Henry I. Roger of Salisbury was one of Henry’s principal courtiers: Bishop of Salisbury from 1102 and Justiciar of England during most of Henry’s reign. In his buildings at Old Sarum cathedral and the castles of Sarum, Sherborne, Devizes and Malmesbury he followed his king’s example in producing magnificent architecture, lavishly decorated. Very little of it survives, but it is not surprising to find that further examples of early beakhead, dating from the 1130s, come from Roger’s buildings at Old Sarum and Sherborne. A bird beakhead from Old Sarum belonged to the arch of a doorway, while the Sherborne beakheads, carved with birds’ heads on either side of a roll, originally decorated the vault of a hall or chapel. Roger’s nephew Alexander was to become Bishop of Lincoln, and it was his remodelling of the west front of Lincoln cathedral that included the beakhead ornament mentioned in my opening paragraphs. As well as this kind of courtly and dynastic transmission of the ornament, the beakhead used at major sites like Reading and Old Sarum was copied locally in parish churches, especially on doorways, but occasionally too on chancel arches and vault ribs, like those in the church of SS Mark & Luke at Avington, only some 20 miles from Reading.

Beakheads on the chancel arch at Avington (Berks)

The search for the origins of beakhead has led scholars like George Zarnecki in the direction of Anglo-Saxon manuscript illumination, but there are obvious difficulties in accounting for the transmission of late 10th-century manuscript motifs into stone carving more than a century later, and without anything in the way of convincing intermediaries. A more fruitful line of enquiry for beakheads in general might again be via the patronage of Henry I, and the crucial monument may be the keep of Norwich Castle, started by William II, but probably substantially built by Henry I before the foundation of Reading Abbey. The main doorway was decorated with a simplified proto-beakhead design, ingeniously christened “beaker clasp” by Heslop, both in the archivolt and on the jambs, a type of ornament that was to gain some popularity in its own right. It consists of a series of tapered and chamfered stone bridges like drinking-beakers resting on the angle roll.

Beaker clasp on the 2nd order of Norwich Castle keep doorway

The south doorway of Avington church has a simple form of the beaker ornament, carved on the jambs, and in the south doorway of Quenington church (Gloucs), beaker-clasps alternate with bird beakheads in the arch.

Beaker clasp and bird beakhead alternate in the arch of the south doorway at Quenington Gloucestershire)

The designs used at both Avington and Quenington were almost certainly  copied from Reading by local sculptors. The beaker ornament was widely used at Norwich Castle for decorating window arches and blind arcading on all four main facades. The motif produces alternations of light and shadow across the arches which are effective in conveying a feeling of richness and solidity, and which echo similar effects produced by the corbel tables and battlements. In this view of the development of beakhead ornament, the figural carving of the beakheads is an embellishment of a motif whose original purpose was to provide texture through the alternation of light and shadow, in much the same way as the chevron ornament with which it is often combined.

Even if the original purpose of beaker clasp was the creation of light effects, there is no doubt that the beakhead that developed from it became an important way of introducing grotesque and monstrous images into the decoration of arches. Just why twelfth-century sculptors and their patrons considered this appropriate for sacred buildings is a question that has exercised commentators since Bernard of Clairvaux, questioned its purpose in cloister decoration in the 1120s. The Abbé Auber, writing in the nineteenth century, considered that gargoyle waterspouts were devils conquered by the church and set to perform menial tasks, and later in that century and in the early part of the next it was fashionable to look for moral messages by identifying monstrous creatures with the animals described in Bestiaries, which had Christian ethical messages attached to them in the text. A more convincing explanation, developed in the work of Michael Camille, is that these terrifying creatures represent the sin and vice that fills the world, which must be rejected by the man of God. The predatory birds and fierce beasts of Reading cloister; the grotesque and obscene corbels that surround so many churches, and the foul creatures that cluster around their doorways are there to remind us that the world is really like that, however beautiful and serene it may appear, and that the only refuge is to be found in the Church.

Further reading

R. Baxter, ‘Beakhead ornament and the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture’, Historic Churches, 11, 2004, 8-10.

R. Baxter and S. Harrison, “The Decoration of the Cloister at Reading Abbey”,  L.Keen & E.Scarff (eds.), Windsor: Medieval Archaeology, Art and Architecture of the Thames Valley (British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions XXV, 2002), 302-12.

M. Camille, Image on the Edge, London 1992.

T. A. Heslop, Norwich Castle Keep, Romanesque Architecture and Social Context.  Norwich  1994.

J. Salmon, “Beakhead ornament in Norman Architecture,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal XXXVI (1946), 349-57.

G. Zarnecki, Romanesque Lincoln. The Sculpture of the Cathedral, Lincoln 1988.

G. Zarnecki & F. Henry, “Romanesque Arches decorated with Human and Animal Heads”, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, XX-XXI (1957-58), 1-35.