Ancient and Medieval Bronze Casting, Sculpture, Stone Carving and Land Art in the British Isles

Here in Wales resides the last non-endangered Celtic language, ‘Cymraeg’, (Welsh). It is one of many links that we can draw back in time to some the earliest examples we have of British bronze, artwork and sculpture.

We think the ‘hidden people’ who lived in Wales, Scotland, England and Ireland* before the isles were conquered by the Romans, had developed a reputation through Europe as fine metalworkers. Particularly, in the making of bronze tools, swords and armour, and in beautiful gold jewellery and ornamentation. The celtic peoples’ oral tradition disappeared after the conquest, leaving Roman written sources undisputed until modern archaeological research showed some of it to be… somewhat questionable.

Right Bronze Age burial artifacts unearthed at Bush Barrow near Stonehenge

While I hope some people might say we Britons are not actually ignorant and non-musical(!) there is plenty of evidence early Britons were very good at making art. Early sculpture and land art is embedded within a European context of the movement of people, ideas and goods. And as the pathways for that movement grows over the passing of centuries, British art and sculpture evolves, responding to and influencing art on the wider global stage.

Which all leads us to ask; if we can’t trust the Romans, who can we trust?

The art which has traditionally lasted the test of time, is art made using the most robust materials. Metal, particularly the corrosion resistant bronze & gold, along with stone, are unsurprisingly the materials that last longest. But we should also count among those the land itself. Below is the White Horse, at Uffington, which is estimated to be over 3,000 years old. Objects like the ones above, and places, as demonstrated by land art like the White Horse, all show in particularly gorgeous form, how art can last through the ages, (either with the help of an annual clean and rewax, some judicious mowing, or if really let go for a few thousand years, a lot of archaelogy). But art doesn’t last only through the survival of objects, but the perpetuation of ideas. Note how the horse is carved to replicate the contours of the crest of the hill.

Modern british sculpture, like everything that came before it, relies on the application of tools (including hands) to three-dimensional materials, to make marks and shapes, or to fabricate. The history of modelling these shapes and marks, or fabricating sculpture, along with the techniques used, still lurk in passed-down skills and knowledge. They also reside in the ‘re-discovery’ of old methods; and in the process of artistic inspiration. Parallels still pop up, even when our contemporary artists actively seek the paths of self-exploration. Indeed, not all sculptors draw directly on history to find their next mark, shape, or concept – but the sculptors who actively reject some part of the old ways of sculpting, are still inextricably part of that tradition.

Above Right You can see there are still parallels to be made between an original, modernist sculpture made in 1951, and a 5000-year-old chalk sculpture (the Burton Agnes Drum). The confines of manipulating 3d material using the human body and tools creates a common sculpting vernacular – a tactile, visual method of communication that has evolved a millenia-old language. 

Such comparisons can be a little fatuous – the equivalent of Bobby Henderson’s identification that the trend in rising world temperatures occurred at the same time as a fall in piracy – leading to the tongue-in-cheek causal assumption that global warming is caused by pirates. But I’m seeking to throw a net around the entirety of British bronze, stone and land art here; to invite the assumption that my own bronze statues are sophisticated and valuable – because they benefit from such a rich tradition of British creation and creativity. Yes…

Here is the Capel Garmon Fire Dog, made of iron and found in Wales. It likely graced a chieftain’s fire before being thrown into a body of water as an offering to a Celtic god and surviving, preserved in the peat.  The Fire Dog is Late Iron Age, and the shield and torc above are Early Iron Age. The swirls are lovely but I particularly like early animal sculpture such as these horses!

Below: 10th Century (so 2000 years younger than the Uffington Horse), the Cerne Abbas chalk giant has probably lost a cloak, and possibly also a severed head with time. Theories abound about saxon deities, Romano-British depictions of Hercules, and 17th century fakery. Either way, a lovely, ‘living’, changing artwork relying on revival through communal labour.

410 AD to 1066 AD, the time between the ending of the Roman occupation, and the Norman invasion, was often referred to as ‘the Dark Ages’. Supposedly it was a 600 period of cultural diminishment between two civilised occupiers. Successive waves of Scandinavian, Danish and German invaders did cause massive disruption to the native populations, but they brought their own cultural influences to what was becoming a very diverse melting pot.

Left The Govan Stones also include several ‘Hogsback’ Stones, which are seen as Viking influenced. The carvings suggest the shingles of a house, or the hull of a longboat. Some look to have been recarved to suggest mythical beasts. They are particularly fascinating as no examples exist in Scandinavia.

Below This early medieval period is very notably responsible for the burgeoning Christian imagery in historic British sculpture, which flowered in Ireland and spread into other areas of the British Isles.  So much of the sculpture that survives is religious that historians have theorised why it is so dominant. One theory is that the Church was the centre of social and political life. Another is that it was, alongside the developing nobility, one of the few sources of funding for expensive artwork. Another is that there is a survival bias – religious work, often placed in important locations, such as churches, may have been perceived as more valuable, and deserving of preservation.

Above Right The spectacular Muiredach Cross in Meath, Ireland dated to the early 10th Century. These two images are also a wonderful example of aging in different conditions – preservation indoors has kept the detail of this ivory crozier decoration looking fresh, where the sandstone has weathered. 

Left The Clonmacnoise Crozier is late 11th-century and a lovely example of Irish metalwork. Look at the beautiful line of dogs on the top! Croziers are inspired by the idea of the priest being the shepherd of their flock. Ireland and its evangelising monks were responsible for the spread of Christian iconography across the rest of the British Isles. 

Below The screaming face of the Iona island monastery illustrates the story of the live sacrifice of a man, buried to ensure the foundations of the abbey. Dug up three days later, the monk, still alive, told them “There is no such great wonder in death, nor is Hell what it has been described,” at which heresy St Columba ordered him buried again! The monk Oran is forever trapped in the stone, screaming.

Left Bronze and ceramic aquamaniles from the 13th Century, used for washing hands at table. Both fashioned as knights.

Above The sinister Doomstone in York Minster. The carving depicts a cauldron and the three mouths of hell. A tortured soul is lowered into the boiling 12th Century version of just punishment. A perfect depiction of why the croziers we’ve just looked at were so necessary!

Religious sculpture is a major theme in surviving British craftmanship, developing and changing with the major trends of the passing centuries. The holy buildings in Britain showcase one of the materials not featured greatly earlier in this discussion. Wood – one of the most available, relatively easy to work, and inexpensive 3d materials, has sadly been most impacted by the passage of time. Most early Celtic decorative work has been lost, along with the perishable material it was carved on, (see the state of the 6,000-year-old Maerdy oak, only just identifiable as having been carved decoratively all those years ago, and the only surviving example of wood carving in Britain from that period.) Moving forward in time, medieval wood carving has been particularly well preserved in Britain’s churches, despite the destruction of much of the Catholic ornamentation in the Protestant Reformation. Britain’s angel roofs (13th to 15th Century) represent the largest body of surviving Medieval wood carving. Below is St Peter Mancroft, and it showcases the extraordinary feet of creating sculpture designed to be viewed from 60 feet, or 18 meters, below.

Below Right: Considered one of the finest 15th Century bronzes made in Britain, the tomb of Richard Beauchamp in Warwick is armoured in full ‘steel’ plate, at prayer, and accompanied by the family emblems of a Bear and a Griffin. The protective cage is very unusual, giving a strange sensation when looked through from the perspective of the gilded effigy. Below Left: I’d like to juxtapose this with the 15th Century bench end carvings in St. Mary’s Church, Beverley. The warmth of the material speaks to me, and the sense that these kinds of carvings are so much closer to the everyday medieval citizen than the impressive gilt monument to the Beauchamp family.  I feel I sense the sculptor more in these kinds of designs, and I enjoy that feeling of the artist’s individuality, observation, imagination and the execution of their mark making.

Left The 15th Century Tomb of John Baret – following the European fashion of cadaver tombs. There are some particularly fine examples in Belgium.

I like this example because, though heavily embedded in the traditions of catholic mortuary sculpture – the style so clearly represents a period of changing ideas in sculpture. There are many depictions of death and change through the ancient and modern eras in Britain, but this gorgeous and stark imagery of death allows me to draw a mental close on the Late Medieval era and look forward to the flowering of pageantry in the Early Modern.

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