Kencot, Oxfordshire (II)

B and I visited Kencot on August bank holiday last year. It's got a mad tympanum, so that absorbed our drawing energy. But there were also interesting Norman things inside. One of them being this font. Guy Thornton has a photo of it here with some flowers in.

It's very neatly and evenly carved, and I remember that this did make me question its age. But I think when you look at the design, it's got that typical repetitive pattern that makes its Norman origin pretty believable.

It sounds a bit odd, but what it reminds me of most, is my beloved cast concrete Brutalist buildings. Something like this - with straightforward geometric design, and the character of the decoration deriving directly from the nature of the material. On the photo of the font you may notice that extra texture is derived from (what I think are) fossil shells embedded in the stone. I like that, it breaks up the geometrical design in an interesting and random way. I also really like the way the carver has produced three different tones from the way the carving interacts with the light - dark, medium and light.

It also looks remarkably like a salad spinner or a zoetrope. But neither of those things had been invented in Norman times either. I'd initially dismissed it as less interesting for its flatness. But actually I think it's a grower.

Image © Rhiannon 2015

Langford, Oxfordshire

There are a lot of churches with amazing stuff in this area, and the wandering artist has such a wealth of choice. However, it being bank holiday, the weather here was firmly against us. And this was a shame at Langford, because all the choicest sculpture is outside. Now a truly committed wanderer should have one of these, a WeatherWriter (TM). Ohh yess it's at the top of my christmas list. But even with one of those it'd have been no fun drawing with water dripping down our faces. So we dove into the large church and hoped the rain would go away (it didn't).

Over the porch doorway there's a Saxon carving of poor old Jesus on the cross. That would be bad enough, but the chap's got to suffer the indignity of having been put back together wrong. The carving has obviously been moved at some point by some cowboy builders who weren't paying attention. That or they thought it'd be a laugh.

We stood there in the rain trying to get our hands into the position that Jesus has got his - it's not possible to transpose your thumbs to the other side of your hand though. So his arms are definitely on the wrong sides of his body.
And to add insult to injury, the two figures accompanying him are looking away from him. The one on the right looks like they're whistling and pretending they're somewhere else. The church guide says they are Mary and St John. But neither of them look particularly female? Mary and John do accompany Jesus in various depictions of the crucifixion though.

With the power of photoshop at hand, how could I leave my photo of this travesty unfiddled with? So here we have it - I unveil to you - the original arrangement of this carved scene. Okay so it's not a brilliant effort as all the shadows are too much bother. But you get the general idea.

The church guide makes the interesting point that in this depiction, Jesus has got a bare chest. This makes the carving later (c. 1020-1040) than the stupendous one that is round the corner. The huge 'rood' of the Headless Jesus shows him wearing a neat robe. This is thought to date it to 700-800AD. Which is like madly ancient. In fact it's got to be amongst the oldest things we've seen.

The fact that he's missing his head only adds to the peculiarness of coming across this huge sculpture.

Kencot, Oxfordshire

This is the excellent Norman tympanum over the doorway at St George's in Kencot. You don't expect to come across an astrological symbol on a church. I don't really understand what it's doing there. But then so many of the symbols seem quite obscure. I like Arthur Collins' 1914 Symbolism of animals and birds represented in English church architecture. But even he doesn't make any particularly convincing suggestion. He does say that Virgil had centaurs at the gates of hell. But to be honest they were probably on the side of the baddies, not there to put arrows down the devil's mouth, as the carving below suggests. And an archer is mentioned in Revelation 6:1-2. But he was sitting on a white horse, rather that being half man half horse. So I still have no idea. But I like the carving anyway and I liked the style of the lettering (and we haven't often seen writing at all).

I was quite pleased with this effort. In fact I sent it off with some others to be printed on postcards. I did notice 'Sagitarius' wasn't spelt right but I thought it was ok because that's How It Was. I'd stood there and copied the style of the writing really carefully.

Actually that's How It Wasn't. I just didn't notice there was another T between the centaur's head and the bow. My sister enjoyed pointing it out to me. This is a bit of a shame.

Images © Rhiannon 2014