Scribo: New Masthead...Capitals and Headstops

With all this imagination going on, what better time to revamp the masthead of this blog?

St Helen & St Giles, Rainham, Essex

I have used those odd grey eyes staring out at you more than once on blogs. It is a door capital from the 12th century Anglo-Norman church of St. Helen and St. Giles in Rainham, Essex.

St Helen & St Giles, Rainham, Essex

Capitals are generally encountered where there is no projecting stonework beyond the face of the wall into which they are built. Capitals in the classical sense are split into 'orders': that is Ionic, Doric, Corinthian and Composite which start with simple Ancient Greek designs and end with complex Roman versions. The types carved into the heads or faces of people or animals are most often pre-Reformation medieval although the Victorians took a liking to them on occasion.

The one used in my masthead is one of a pair. I admit it does appear to be rather stylised - pictured left - and has something sinister about it which is why it appeals to me. Its companion, however, is just weird. It looks like a pair of eyes staring through a chainmail coif. And it may be.

Ely Cathedral: Prior's Doorway (LH)

Monastic masons were, first and foremost, trained to think and build structurally and be portrait artists last - if at all. Their role was to build churches and cathedrals that glorified God, not play to the vanity of prelates and benefactors. At Rainham, it's possible these strange carvings may even be afterthoughts: attempts to create faces out of stones originally shaped and fitted. I've not done any major research on them to learn what greater scholars such as Sir Nikolaus Pevsner thought of them and I'm happy to leave it that way. I'm letting my imagination run a little wild here.

Ely Cathedral: Prior's Doorway (RH)

Elsewhere in the country stylised representation was not always the norm. Left are the two capitals from the Prior's Doorway at Ely Cathedral. Believed to have been constructed around 1135AD, these faces are almost certainly real people. Yes, they are slightly stylised but nowhere near the extremes presented at Rainham. The cathedral's own website makes no comment about the heads indicating it has no idea who they were or whether, indeed, they were both the same person at different ages. They may have been father and son or master mason and apprentice. Perhaps, they were Prior and Sub-Prior. We will almost certainly never know. We can only admire the skill of the craftsmen that made them along with the rest of the door (not shown but well worth a visit).

Dorchester-upon-Thames: to me this
looks like the Formula 1 racing driver
Sir Jackie Stewart

Headstops are most commonly encountered in church architecture. Most people have seen or at least heard of gargoyles because fiction and cinema have made them often sinister, even animate, elements of gothic horror stories. However, headstops are more frequent that capitals carved into faces and are, literally, carvings of heads (medieval ones often depicting major benefactors of the particular church they are attached to) where the arches over windows or other recessed features stop (see right). Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 20th century's doyen of church architecture gave the definition as: a terminal to a hoodmould or label (projecting moulding above an arch or lintel) carved with a head.1

To finish up, below are some wonderfully expressive examples of other headstops from around the country. When you're out and about, have a look for them - although you may need binoculars or a good camera lens like an 18-400mm to get a decent view/shot.