A figure sculpture at Upton Bishop, Herefordshire: continuity and revival in early medieval sculpture

Abstract

AbstractIn the nineteenth century, a red sandstone figural carving was located in the south-facing chancel wall of the church of St John the Baptist, Upton Bishop, near Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire. In 2005, following the removal of the stone for recording and conservation, the author was invited to examine and report on the sculpture, and particularly to review the proposal that the sculpture, rather than being of Roman date as had traditionally been supposed, was more probably a Romanesque carving of the twelfth century. The characteristics of the Upton Bishop carving are here examined and the various attributions of dating are reviewed, as a consequence of which it is suggested that the sculpture is neither Roman nor Romanesque in date, but rather is of pre-Conquest origin, most probably of aroundad800. It is thus suggested that the Upton Bishop sculpture represents a significant addition to the corpus of Anglo-Saxon figural sculpture in Herefordshire and the western Midlands, that the characteristics of the sculpture suggest well-established traits forming part of a local style and that these were taken forward into the Romanesque period, thus contributing to the distinctive character of the Herefordshire School of sculpture.