The BBC News website reported recently about a survey sponsored by the Sociery of Antiquaries of Scotland to record and catalogue surviving sculptural work in the churches of southern Scotland. As those involved in the study explain in the article this is the type of research done a century and more ago, but which has rather gone out of academic fashion.
There is a degree or urgency involved as the Church of Scotland pursues its crass policy of closing so many of its places of worship and selling them off irrespective of their age and history. Say what one may about the Church of England closing churches, but it is nothing in comparison to the cultural and spiritual disaster north of the border.
The illustrated article can be accessed at Sculpted stone study could shed new light on lost kingdoms
A fragment of a ninth century Anglian shrine or tomb found in the south aisle of Jedburgh Abbey
Image: Reddit
One of the ideas behind the study this to look for any evidence for regional differences arising from political affiliation between those works produced in Anglian Northumbrian Bernicia in the east and those in the west from Strathclyde with its links to Ireland and artistic influences from there.
My own hunch would be that the political divisions would not be such as to impede a recognised sculptor travelling across Lanarkshire or the Cheviots and finding commissions from ecclesiastical patrons. The sculptor’s own original base may well have shaped his style much more than the local allegiances of those he worked for.
When looking at these sculptures in the report it is importantly to remember that originally these works, usually standing crosses or remains of tombs or shrines,
would have been painted and the details highlighted.
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