Stone and wood, old and new: skeuomorphic and spoliated architectural sculpture in early medieval England

Early medieval English church-builders employed skeuomorphic and spoliated stone
architectural sculpture in deliberate and strategic ways to enhance the significance(s) of
their church-building activity by adding additional layers of meaning to the stone churches
that they built. This thesis documents and catalogues all surviving examples of stone
skeuomorphic architectural sculpture from early medieval England as well as a number of
noteworthy characteristic examples of spoliated architectural sculpture. Both varieties of
sculpture are interpreted according to their function as “framing” devices in both literal and
metaphorical terms.
For the early medieval English, church-building using stone was considered a
practice apart from the contemporary tradition of building with wood, the material of most
of the built environment of the time. Church-building in stone was a performative act of
artistic work meant to signal appreciation of Romanitas. Both building materials were
associated with sophisticated webs of meaning that would have varied over time and
across diWerent social and geographic environments. In general timber architecture could
convey associations of familiarity and secular power and prestige whereas stone was a
material that held multivalent associations including enta geweorc and “Roman-ness” that
were contradictory but united in their association with the foreign.
By using skeuomorphic and spoliated architectural sculptures, church-builders
could manipulate and blur the material boundaries between stone and wood, old and new,
by shaping audience perceptions of the buildings that they adorned. Faux-timber features
could make the churches that they decorated “timber” structures in a sense while
simultaneously allowing them to retain retaining their “Roman” stone materiality. Likewise,
spoliated carvings could allow newly built churches to instead be seen as “restored”
structures echoing the revered past. Both varieties of carving were carefully and selectively
used to manipulate audience expectations and perceptions while remaining within the
strictures of the conservative architectural traditions of early medieval England.