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So we are starting to get an idea of which of these five masons carved where. Already we have had to make assumptions and inferences but some patterns emerge. |
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JO: John Oakham SC: Simon Cottesmore LL: Lawrence of Leicester RR: Ralf of Ryhall GM: Gargoyle Master |
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Firstly, John Oakham was the most prolific figure in the group. Out of the fourteen churches that had friezes he appears eight times: three times with his own unmistakable cow-lion faces and five times in a hybrid style with Simon Cottesmore. It is a slightly contentious issue and certainly in my first edition I had no idea that John and Simon had this sort of co-operative relationship but the visual observations support it. This is the only plausible explanation for the flea carving at Langham where John’s presence is otherwise far from obvious. That it is not all the work of one mason is supported by the secondary trademark of the batwing lions at Cottesmore, Buckminster and Hungarton where I surmise that Simon was the more prolific of the two. In seven of those nine John Oakham/Simon Cottesmore churches they are apparently the only sculptors. The exceptions are Oakham and the very nearby Langham which is less than two miles away. At these we see the appearance of all three of the other masons, although the badly-weathered Langham friezes leave many questions that can’t be answered. Lawrence is the most easily-identifiable of the men here. His style is quite distinctive and other than at Langham he left his own distinctive lion trademarks, It is interesting that both he and Simon invariable used the ends of friezes for these motifs. There is a remarkable correlation between the presence of Lawrence and of the confirmed presence of the Gargoyle Master. Leaving aside Owston and Empingham that have no friezes, at four of the five GM churches Lawrence is there too. Oakham is the exception. At Langham the gargoyles are badly damaged but there is a possibility that they were by the Master as well. Ralf, perhaps, is the hardest to pin down. Apart from at Ryhall itself, only a small group of grotesques at Oakham can be unequivocally laid at his door. The absence of a mooning man at Ryhall can either be because it was part of a short run of frieze that was lost when a parvise room was added to its south porch or simply because Ralf was working there independently of the wider group. We rely on tell-tale label stops to place him firmly at Lowesby, and probably at Cold Overton and Tilton-on-the-Hill (about two miles from Lowesby). That Lowesby is the only church besides Ryhall and Oakham where black lead eyes are prolific invites us to think that these are Ralf’s own stock in trade. However, it is impossible to definitively point those carvings at Ralf because the style is not obviously similar to Ryhall’s. There are also single examples of this motif at Langham, Whissendine. These are not so easy to explain. Similarly, The Gargoyle Master loved to use black eyes. Were he and Ralf one and the same man? What is interesting about Ralf is that those label stop carvings seem to denote a man of some status. It is difficult to believe that he was not either the contracting mason or a sculptor of some distinction. I suspect the former. This would suggest that he may have suggested the technique at Lowesby and Tilton but did not necessarily use it himself at those locations. |
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What Does this Tell Us about the Stonemasons? |
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A close study of the decorative sculpture at these churches discourages us from the view that these five men were “master” craftsmen as opposed to solid professionals. Two of the masons - Lawrence of Leicester and Simon Cottesmore - clearly did not have the ability to make a career of sculpture alone. We must assume that they were full time masons and only part-time sculptors and it is my contention that they were simply acting as “finishers” during the final stages of the building programs being undertaken. The other three were clearly men of greater ability. Ralf of Ryhall’s output was imaginative and well executed. Ryhall’s frieze is the very best of the bunch, showing imagination, variety and good execution. Indeed, this encourages us to think that Cold Overton’s tower frieze which had a particularly entertaining but sadly damaged set of grotesques was also by Ralf. If Ralf was responsible for the black-eyed carvings at Lowesby then we might suggest that although that although they are above average for the group they fall well short of the Ryhall output. We always have to bear in mind, however, that the quality of sculpture at all of these churches would have as much a function of time and budget as of artistic ability. The Gargoyle Master was clearly a cut above most of his craft. Most gargoyles entertain us by their grotesque nature but they do not, in truth, vary a great deal. It would not be fair to say that if you have seen one leering dragon staring down from a tower you have seen them all but it is not too far from the truth! With the Gargoyle Master we can point to things that set him apart. Firstly he employs the unusual, although not quite unique device of carving figures at the bases of the main figures. Secondly, he uses the black lead eye device that is extremely rare. Not all survive but it seems likely that he employed it on all of his gargoyles. Thirdly, he is surely unique in having bequeathed a recurring recognisable design - the hitchhiker gargoyle - that survives at no fewer than six churches. If it is not true that one gargoyle looks much like another then it is true that one would struggle to pin down one design of gargoyle to any two churches let alone to six. So we must allow the Gargoyle Master as being exceptional in his craft. This brings us to John Oakham who is the biggest enigma here. The estates of Ralf, Lawrence, Simon and the Gargoyle Master are confined to this narrow geographical area and the number of churches at which they carved is hardly spectacular. None of them, I would suggest, left a body of work that would entitle us to think we are seeing a life’s work. We are surely seeing only a subset of the what they did in their working lives. Yes, they may have drifted away from the trade through incapacity or - rather less likely - more attractive opportunities. They may even have died. More likely, however, is that they carried out a far wider range of tasks that we are unable to identify. John Oakham, however, spread his wings much further. Within the Mooning Men Group we can place him at eight churches and he even, as we have seen, coined his own trademark carving - “the flea”. But we know that John worked outside this area. We have already seen that at Harlaxton Church he left us a flea carving, but not a mooner. He also carved them however at two other Lincolnshire churches not within the MMG either organisationally or geographically at Brant Broughton and at Swineshead. So we can say categorically that he was at ten churches. To that I can add the certainly that he also sculpted at Denton and Muston - both very close to Harlaxton - and most surprisingly at Boston which is nigh on fifty miles from Oakham, the centre of gravity of of the MMG. With varying degrees of probability we can also place him at Heckington, Anwick and Southwell Minster and Grantham. Perhaps another half dozen are outside possibilities. John’s wanderings - and this will be the subject of its own chapter - gives us much to think about. Between thirteen and twenty churches is quite a roster. Moreover some of those churches don’t just sport friezes and gargoyles. Brant Broughton and Heckington, for example, also have masses of large set-piece sculptures on every buttress and pinnacle. Ironically, almost perversely, these are harder to attribute to individual masons than frieze carvings. That is because the canvas is so much larger and allows for much more variety and flamboyance. How many of these are attributable to John is an open question, although I believe it is probably a great many. Yet, to set against this, are many much more modest packages of sculptural work such as we see at Harlaxton. What was going on? Let us start by saying that John was capable of very high quality work such as we will see at Brant Broughton. That at Whissendine, however, was quite mundane. As mentioned several times, time and budget will have had much to do with that. Whereas, however, we can look at Brant Broughton and Heckington and say that John was almost certainly employed only or mainly for his decorative skills - such sculptural cornucopias were surely not left to the tail end of the building work. That seems very much less likely within the MMG and we must remember that the mooning men carvings demonstrate that he was part of a wider organisation. It seems much more likely that John was operating at these sites as both a hewer and as a sculptor. The same logic applies to Lawrence and Simon. Then we need to determine whether any of these men was likely to have been a contracting mason? Did one or more of them win the contract for the work, assemble the workforce, plan the building work and project manage the work? It seems unlikely. It passes belief that such a man would have time for a spot of sculpture amongst all of his other activities and you would could not say that most of the work was of the highest quality. True, I have tentatively suggested that label stop carvings at such as Ryhall, Oakham. Lowesby and Cold Overton depict real people and, indeed, that they may define the presence of Ralf of Ryhall a man who clearly did have exceptional talent. I believe that we are seeing the (weathered) faces of the contractor masons in some of these sculptures, and maybe of master carpenters to boot. Quite possibly - even probably - we are seeing Ralf himself too, of course. That does not mean that Ralf was himself the contractor, however. It seems much more likely that Ralf simply had the capability of depicting real people where others did not (although I am sure John Oakham did). I have stated elsewhere my belief that carving human faces was much more challenging than carving grotesque heads and fleurons. How much more challenging if the face in question was a real person that needed to be recognisable? Even more challenging, surely, if that man was a colleague or a boss? These men were, I believe, general masons with a facility for sculpture that the contractor mason chose to exploit and may have used as “carrot” to win contracts, Once you accept that likelihood then it seems most likely that there was just one contractor mason. He was the man who devised the mooning man as his “company logo”. His workforce probably came and went, although those such as John, Lawrence, Simon and Ralf were clearly loyal and long term members. Equally we see orphaned friezes that we cannot ascribe to any of these men, probably the work of masons who just came and went. The absence of carvings by one of these “named” sculptors at any given church does not mean that he was not there in some other capacity; it means simply that others got the carving job. |
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Question Mark Sites My first printed account of the Mooning Men Group contained a few churches that I have not so far mentioned here: Irnham and Careby in Lincolnshire and Market Overton in Rutland were not, I have subsequently concluded, the work of the MMG. Of those mentioned so far in this second edition, only Cold Overton relies upon a degree of inference and judgement. Later we are going to see several friezes carved by John Oakham well outside the geographical heartlands of the MMG. His ubiquity and evolving style make for a quite extensive list of church friezes for which he may or not have been responsible. Within or on the margins of the MMG area, however, there are two other sites that cannot be ruled out as part of the MMG corpus: Thurlby and Colsterworth in Lincolnshire. In discussing these we must always bear in mind that the MMG membership was most certainly fluid and that some of its masons might have worked within other lodges or for other contractor-masons, or even to have been the contractor-masons themselves. They were free to follow their profession wherever and howsoever they chose. So we are not talking of a fixed group of men. Think in terms of a football team that over the years gains and loses players without losing its identity. As we will see below, our men had homes away from the lodge. Those homes would not all have been in the same village, of course. Nor would the men have had the same degree of willingness to travel. We will see that John Oakham wandered far and wide where others such as Lawrence of Leicester are found only in a quite restricted area. When we look at Ryhall - the very definition of the work of Ralf as a sculptor - he seems to have been the only decorative mason. Was he simply beyond the geographical comfort zone of the others? Was he finding work with another contractor? Did his work there precede or post-date the work of the MMG? All of these are questions we cannot answer. We need to bear them in mind when looking at the very different cases of Thurlby and Colsterworth. Thurlby is six miles north east of Ryhall, which is itself the eastern extremity of MMG operations. It has extensive friezes on its clerestory and its west tower. There is no mooner and no flea. The friezes are, however, imaginative with a plethora of animals on the the south clerestory. The tower frieze is clearly by a different mason, and here we have a heavy focus on lions and hounds. In fact, it is the best tower frieze in the area. There are two label stops with goffered caul headdresses, one each on the clerestory and on the tower in evidence so we know the sculpture is within the MMG time frame. The “look and feel” of the friezes and the timescales point to the MMG but frustratingly there is no killer evidence and pinning the sculptures to one of the “named” masons has proved impossible although I do think there is a strong chance that Ralf of Ryhall carved the tower frieze. Colsterworth, like Thurlby, is on the fringe of the MMG but is only three miles east of Buckminster and nine miles south of Harlaxton so certainly within the right area. It has no frieze at all. This is certainly not a site of significant MMG activity. There is a mooner label stop on the west window of the south aisle, however, and although it varies slightly from the norm that is likely to be due more to its role as a one off carving unconstrained by the physical restrictions of a cornice. The other window stop also looks reminiscent of of others. Although it would, perhaps, be disproportionate to include it amongst the MMG nexus given that we are talking of what looks like the relatively minor job of installing a replacement window, I would say with some confidence that either John Oakham or Simon Cottesmore did this work when passing through. |
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Other Puzzles and Contradictions I have painted a picture of a single mason-contractor with his mooning men logo, whose team or company roamed the villages of the East Midlands extending churches, replacing roofs and leaving lots of distinctive sculpture . I speak of a travelling group of masons some of whom are capable of decorative carving whilst others were not. I suggest that where John Oakham was a sculptor he left the mark of himself and his collaborator Simon Cottesmore - the “flea”. It is a tidy set of conclusions that fits 90% or more of the observable facts. Life and history are rarely tidy. What are the problems with this theory? 1. Ralf of Ryhall left no Mooner Carvings at Ryhall or at Cold Overton It is possible that a mooner was carved at Ryhall and was lost when a second storey - a parvise room - was added to the south porch. We know that carvings were lost because two surviving sculptures were carefully cut in half. Cold Overton has also lost some carvings and many have been very badly weathered. Perhaps there had been a mooner there too? I would suggest that this would all be too much of a coincidence. Was Ralf working outside the the Mooning Men Group at these churches? That explanation serves only to create another problem. I have suggested that the label stops we see at Ryhall and all of the other Ralf churches show men of the MMG leadership cadre. Why then would there be mooners at Loweby and Oakham but not at Ryhall? If one of these men were the contractor and if the mooner was his trademark why did he not insist upon it at Ryhall and Cold Overton? The simplest explanation is that the mooner trademark emerged later in the career of the group. Ryhall - at the extreme east of this group of churches and which shows evidence of a single sculptor - might have been the first. It might also reasonably said the a mooner would not have sat well stylistically with Cold Overton’s tower frieze. It too, of course, might have pre-dated the adoption of the mooner motif. There is no easy answer. 2. The Black Eye Conundrum Two masons very obviously used this device more or less consistently: Ralf and the Gargoyle Master. Yet its appears on a single carving at no less than four other churches: Whissendine, Tilton-on-the-Hill, Cold Overton and Langham. Moreover, at Ryhall Ralf uses it on the south side friezes and label stops but not on the north! The presence of a plumber would have been a pre-requisite for the use of this technique and this probably goes a long way towards explaining its patchy appearance amongst the MMG. That its most widespread deployment was by the Gargoyle Master who was, by definition, a collaborator with plumbers is incontrovertible supporting evidence. The plumber’s work must have preceded frieze placement so the Ryhall mystery is almost certainly explained by the earlier departure of the plumber while the frieze was still under construction. That does not explain the appearances of single examples at four churches, however. That at Tilton-on-the-Hill is on a largely undamaged frieze of carvings with no signs of “lost” black eyes. Langham’s aberrational single carving sits amongst a badly damaged and weathered frieze. The carving itself, however, is badly weathered yet the lead has survived on it, but not on any of the others. It seems that both Tilton’s and Langham’s were one-offs. If, as I have suggested, mason-carvers may have had to give way to colleagues at some churches then the appearance of one-off use of black eyes may be down to a culture of “try this out” or simply to masons knocking off the odd carving to help out. Certainly this seems likely at Tilton which is very close to the black eye-rich Lowesby and where the presence of the Gargoyle Master is conspicuous. Counter-intuitively perhaps, aberrational one-off black eye carvings tends to support the notion of a group of collaborating masons rather than to contradict it 3. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow Masons There are sections of frieze that defy definitive attribution to any of the named masons. Part of the Hungarton tower frieze is very obviously by Simon Cottesmore, complete with bat-winged lion. Others, equally clearly, are not and are in style seen nowhere else. Many of the carvings at Tilton-on-the-Hill are not obviously by one of the named masons - although John Oakham is an outside possibility. Whoever carved those seems to have carved also on the tower frieze at Beeby Church in Leicestershire. Tilton is the easternmost outpost of the MMG churches. It seems very simply that this mason, like the unidentifiable mason at Hungarton simply joined the team briefly and then, as we like to say nowadays, “sought opportunities elsewhere”. It is perfectly plausible that venturing further west took them too far from home. 4. Did you say “home”, Lionel...? Weren’t these masons peripatetic? Ah, yes. We haven’t talked about “home” for these masons, have we? Clearly, these masons must have spent long periods on sites around the area. It conjures up the romantic notion of a bunch of free-wheeling, hard-living blokes schlepping about the countryside with, metaphorically, a tent and a sleeping bag. The Easy Riders of the mediaeval scene. Rather like the Victorian navvies. Lock up your daughters! The reality must have been much more prosaic. Academics love to talk about the mason’s “yards” at cathedrals with the implicit and surely correct assumption that the men lived somewhere in the town and came into work each day. When we look at the accounts of the masons employed at Oxford University that model is pretty explicit. Academics, though, are generally interested only in these great churches. It is not an accident that academic interest in masons tends to be vested in University Departments of Mediaeval Art. They don’t have a great deal of interest, it seems, in the lives of parish masons. I absolve the admirable Gabriel Byng from this accusation. His book (see my Bibliography page) is precisely aimed at the building work at parish churches. Amongst the oodles of original research and insight he has gifted to us is an analysis of twenty parish churches for which the name and residency of the contracting mason is know. If you exclude one Roger Denis of London who contracted at the two Lincolnshire churches of Wyberton and Surfleet over one hundred miles from his home, the mean distance between the contractors’ residences and their parish church projects for the other eighteen churches is less than fifteen miles. In nine cases the distance was ten miles or less. Not least of the things that this tells us is that the parishes did not have to look too far to procure a mason ready to contract. This rather pooh-poohs dewy-eyed lyricism about “genius” masons with extraordinary and mystical knowledge vested in them by solemnly appointed master of stonemasons’ guilds, doesn’t it? All that malarkey about “secrets” and “mysteries”! Such metropolises as Henton Punchardon and Great Sherston had their own resident geniuses, it seems! If the men with the means and capital to contract and, we must presume with by far the greatest rewards on offer, worked on average fifteen miles from their “residency” we must again presume that the masons of the ordinary sort must have been even less likely to venture far. The notion of men living wholly on the road does not stand up to even the most cursory of examination. English stonemasons worked a six day week. There was no work, of course, on Sundays. Beyond this, however, there were several reasons why work might be curtailed. Perhaps the most understandable is the difficulty of carrying out building work during winters much more severe than we see today. Prolonged periods of rain could have the same effect. Then there were the festivals of Easter and Christmas when work would stop. Other religious festivals of local significance (for example, the church’s dedicated saint) might cause days off, or at least shorter days. It seems most unlikely that any mason could feel sanguine about not having a permanent home to retreat to even if the lodge could provide temporary shelter in extremis. This is to say nothing of the many periods when a mason might be without employment altogether. A man without a home was, in fact, a vagrant. This explains, I think, why none of the masons in this group other than John Oakham - of which more anon - ventured outside this quite small area. They were “local” men with homes and families in towns and villages. Probably they had smallholdings as well that could be worked by wives and families. The masons were well-paid in mediaeval terms but, as we have seen, the number of days in a year for which they might be paid was probably small by modern standards. They surely needed supplementary income. When we look at the localities it is conspicuous how compact the area is. As I have already mentioned, John Oakham and his collaborator Simon Cottesmore are a special case and can be found far afield. If we look at the area in which we find one or more of Lawrence, Ralf and the Gargoyle Master we get an approximate isosceles triangle with Hungarton, Wymondham and Ryhall and its extremities. The length of the base from Ryhall to Tilton is twenty two miles. From Wymondham to Ryhall is fifteen miles and to Hungarton is about fifteen. This is a very confined area suggesting that these three masons “worked local”. A mason residing somewhere in the centre of their own spheres of activity would not face impossible distances to get home from any of his work sites. 5. Why do we not see a standard style of construction throughout these sites? By this I mean commonality of window tracery, sizes of windows, styles of battlement and so on. We have to remember that we are talking about a period of time that is impossible to determine but which must be a matter of several years to encompass so many churches, some quite extensive. It is likely that in these post-Plague decades window forms were being produced at the quarry and that these quarries will have been serving several contractors. Designs were bound to change over time. Sizes of windows will have been to a large extent dictated by the sizes of aisles and clerestories supportable by the existing structures and also by the ambitions of the parishes. Windows would have been relatively big ticket items both in terms of the complexity of carving and of “setting” the components, but also in terms of the acreage of glass required. In short, we should not expect standardisation of windows. Battlements are an interesting little topic. Who pays any attention to them? A battlement is a battlement, right? Well when you look closely, no it isn’t! Some battlementing is more elaborate than others. Within this group of churches there is a comparatively elaborate form to be seen with a kind of double chamfering to its crenellations. We can see this - and it is distinctive - at Oakham, Langham, Whissendine, Lowesby, Buckminster and in slightly different form at Harlaxton (which is not within the Mooning Men Group). Towers, perhaps because they are further from sight tend to be much simpler with the barest minimum modification to deflect the rain from the top surfaces of the crenallations.. It is obvious that the more elaborate the battlementing then the greater the cost and timescale. That must have been part of contractor-parish negotiations. Ryhall and Knossington have no battlements at all. Several others have a mixture of battlemented and unbattlemented walls. It could have been a matter of taste as well as of cost. 6. Some churches have Gargoyles and others do not. Again, this is easily explicable in terms of cost to the parish as we have discussed with battlements. Just as you did not have to have battlements (although you were certainly going to want parapets of some sort) you did not have to use gargoyles to take water from your roof. And, surprising as it might sound, all gargoyles were not created equal! A gargoyle might spout water straight to the ground in a very direct way! Or it might, in a more refined way, spew its water into a drainpipe that carried it to the ground. A direct gargoyle needs to project a fair way so that the water did not end up streaming down the walls or your expensive new windows. It is a major piece of sculptural work and will require careful building in if it is not to drop to the floor! A gargoyle that discharges into a drainpipe, however, can be fairly flush against the wall. So there are two types. But you do not have to have a gargoyle at all. At the most basic level you could have a simple lead chute without a surrounding carving. So it was all down to aesthetics and, of course, budget. I think it is fair to say that nationally most - although by no means all - churches with a west tower will have gargoyles. In the vast majority of cases there will be no large gargoyles along the aisles or clerestories. Remember that we are talking about parish churches here, not cathedrals or priories that had deep pockets. Within the MMG, however, such gargoyles are surprisingly common. I call them Projecting Lateral Gargoyles (PLGs). They can be seen at Oakham, Whissendine, Langham, Lowesby, Buckminster (just one here) and Tilton-on-the-Hill. The Gargoyle Master definitely carved at four of these. That is not to say that he carved them all: some definitely seem to be by another sculptor. Flush gargoyles appear at Exton (on its tower), Harlaxton, both of them John Oakham churches and seemingly carved by him. John deployed also these at Denton and Brant Broughton outside the MMG. Ryhall and Cottesmore have no gargoyles of any kind. Almost all of the churches have tower gargoyles in what me might call the usual way. Ryhall, Langham, and Cottesmore are exceptions is that they all have classic “Rutland Bruiser” broach spires where water flows naturally from the sloping surfaces directly to the ground. Cold Overton, however, is battlemented but has only the low-cost lead chutes to take away roof water. Now, if you have a church nearby go and look at its tower. If is has the regulation four gargoyles I would lay odds of 10-1 that those gargoyles are at the corners of the towers. At the Mooning Men group churches they are invariably at the cardinal points of the compass, halfway along each parapet. There are no corner gargoyles at any of these churches. So what does this all add up to in our understanding of the MMG? Firstly, the positioning of tower gargoyles, although hardly unique, is a definite part of the roof drainage modus operandi of these masons. It is another little confirmation that that this is all the work of a group with its own ways of doing things. We must add to that the comparative profusion of Projecting Lateral Gargoyles. These reinforce the notion that the MMG had a way of finding ways of spending your parish’s money for you. Equally, though, you could go for cheaper options. Inconsistency in the provision of gargoyles was clearly a matter for the parish and its budget. One last point. John Oakham’s use of flush gargoyles is something that sets him apart, and I have already mentioned that he is set apart by his mobility. It seems that he used them when there were no other decorative masons working with him. He strikes you as being something of a free spirit. 7. Internal Carving Much poring over photographs has failed to give me much insight into which, if any, of these masons carved sculptures within the churches. As with large external carvings, it is quite difficult to compare these interior pieces with the much smaller and necessarily repetitious designs on the outside. It seems inconceivable that there was any kind of “closed shop” on internal carving. We must believe that if a mason could carve friezes on the outside of a church then he could carve, for example, heads on the spandrels of aisle arches inside the church if he was able to step up a more demanding environment. . We can prove that internal carving was something that MMG masons carried out because there are some heads that are bedecked with the cauled headdresses that are so characteristic on the outside, making them contemporaneous with the friezes. Not only that, but some carvings - at Ryhall, Cottesmore and Wymondham - sport black eyes. Another regular location for internal carving is as a corbel supporting the upright part of a roof beam of a clerestory roof. Finally, and uncommonly, sculpture can be on the capitals of aisle arcades. Taking corbels first, we are talking here of a group of masons who are widening aisles and raising clerestories. Replacing the nave roof, therefore, is more or less a given and it gave the masons - and occasionally the carpenters - the chance to carve corbels. As usual, grotesques are the main design and we must remark once again that sacred designs are quite rare in this geographical area. Then we need to look at spandrels: the places where aisle arcades intersect. As with the friezes, sculpture here has no structural rationale; it is purely decorative. Here too we will find plenty of grotesques but human heads are much more common and, again, we would look in vain for sacred imagery. Perhaps we could make the assumption that the nave, against all of our modern sensitivities, was not thought of as being very sacred at all. In the spandrels too we might reasonably assume that some of the faces were indeed those of local worthies and benefactors. The opportunity for the masons would have been alterations to arcades proceeding from the changes to aisle rooflines and from increases to the heights of naves. There would have been no structural imperative for this but aesthetics and the desire to keep everything proportional would surely have made it seem very desirable to the patrons. Higher arches would also have helped to bring light from the aisle windows into the chancel. There are no surviving Romanesque arcades in this group of churches. Of the five masons, only John Oakham can be said with any degree of certainty to have carved sculptures inside the churches here. Indeed, as we will see, he certainly carved a baptismal font at Muston (near Harlaxton) and probably two more at Harlaxton and Addington. There is a possibility of a fourth at Ufford in Cambridgeshire. He certainly created the fine triple sedilia at Leverton Church near The Wash. Such are the difficulties of identification - and the ever-present threat of imagining things that are not there at all - that we can ascribe a handful of carvings to him or a myriad. There is no real evidence for more than these four or five churches other than the seductive “surely they must have done....”. I cannot find a single internal carving where I can put my hand on my heart and say it was by one of Ralf, Simon or Lawrence. It is difficult to rationalise this apparent contradiction. One possibility is suggested by the likely building sequence. The corbels and spandrel carving would probably have been done before the external finishing work of friezes, battlements and gargoyles. I believe that such work was often being carried out at Church A while the bulk of the building crew had moved on to Church B Three churches have internal carvings with black eyes: Ryhall, Cottesmore and Wymondham. To see this rarity inside three churches within such a small area again reinforces the corporate nature of this group of masons. Why it should be only three is a mystery. Ryhall is almost inevitable given the large number of black eyes on both friezes and label stops. Wymondham had the Gargoyle Master in attendance, himself an enthusiastic user. But what are we to make of Cottesmore that has not a single black eye outside the church and no gargoyles? Of course, as always, the presence and co-operation or otherwise of the plumber may provide an explanation. Finally women’s heads with goffered caul headdresses make an appearance inside the churches at Langham and Tilton-on-the-Hill. To add to the frustrations, there are others at Langtoft and Tallington, both close to each other and neither very far from the MMG site at Ryhall. |
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Recommended Next Section: Scratching those Fleas |
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Church Building in the Post-Plague Era Mapping the Sculptors (You are here!) |
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