Hogbacks are stone carved Anglo-Scandinavian sculptures from 10th- to 12th-century northern England and south-west Scotland. Singular hogbacks were found in Ireland and Wales. Hogbacks fell out of fashion by the beginning of the 11th century. Their function is generally accepted as grave markers. Similar later grave markers have been found in Scandinavia. In Cornwall similar stones are known as coped stones.
Hogbacks take the form of recumbent monuments, generally with a curved ('hogbacked') ridge, often also with outwardly curved sides. This shape, and the fact that they are frequently decorated with 'shingles' on either side of the central ridge, show that they are stylised 'houses' for the dead. The 'house' is of a Scandinavian longhouse type associated with the 'mead hall' feasting at Valhalla in pre-Christian Norse religion. One theory is that hogbacks originated among the Danish settlers who emigrated to northern England in the 870s. However, there is not sufficient research to prove or disprove this.
It has been suggested that the monument-type was invented about 920. There are particular concentrations of hogbacks in Yorkshire, Cumbria, and in the Govan Stones collection at the former Govan Old Parish Church in Govan on the River Clyde – the first being their likely area of origin. Individual examples are found over a much wider area, however, from Derbyshire to Central Scotland.
The presence of hogbacks in Scotland is likely due to the Forth-Clyde route, which connected York, England to Dublin. Most hogback sites in Scotland are along waterway routes. There are stray examples as far afield as the Northern Isles and Orkney.
Ireland has a single example at Castledermot, County Kildare, which is similar to two hogbacks in Ingleby Arncliffe, North Yorkshire. [1]
Wales has a single example of a hogback, located at Llanddewi Aberarth Church.
The most numerous collections are the ones preserved in St Thomas's church at Brompton, North Yorkshire. Discovered in 1867 following the restoration of the church, six were taken to Durham Cathedral Library, leaving four whole ones and fragments of others at Brompton. They are characterized by carvings of bears hugging the slabs with strapwork in their mouths. Elsewhere, five impressive examples found in the early medieval churchyard of Govan Old are in the Govan Stones museum, situated in the (former) parish kirk of Govan, Glasgow. There is a fine example in the visitor centre on Inchcolm island in the Firth of Forth. An excellent and highly decorated example exists in St Peter's Church, Heysham, near Morecambe.
There are two main types of hogbacks. One is the Brompton type, which is characterized by massive end beasts. The other type is the warrior's tomb, which looks more like a house. It does not have massive end beasts. [2] Within the two main groups of hogback styles are smaller subsets. The scroll type hogback is a subset of the warrior's tomb type. It is characterized by scroll motifs on the horizontal band below the tegulation. [3]
Govan sits on the south bank of the Clyde River, and was the Christian centre of the Clyde Britons and the Kingdom of Strathclyde. It has the four largest known hogbacks. There are five hogbacks at in the Govan Stones museum at Govan Old Parish Church. The earliest, known as 'Govan 2', has been dated to the tenth century. It has two rows of tegulation with concave, contoured lines. It has a band of interlace beneath the rows of shingles. The interlace pattern is not the same on either side. It is not continuous on either side. This is the only hogback at Govan with stopped-plait interlacing. The stopped plait on this hogback is characterized by a series of small, separated elements with pellet fillers. It also has a running ring-knot interlace with frets. On the other side, the sections of four-cord plait are stylistically reduced to a contoured diagonal bar crossed with a bar and four small pellets flanking it. [3]
The later four hogbacks at Govan are dated to later in the 10th century. The longest hogback at Govan does not have the decorative motifs that its earlier brother has. It is covered in rows of shingles, but they are not contoured. It is wider with a shallower roof pitch. The third hogback is massive. It has a full-bodied, 3-dimensional end-beast with legs. This single animal straddles the monument from one end to the other. The fourth hogback is also characterized by a single end-beast. Its head faces outward, an uncommon feature in hogbacks. The animal's four bent legs point toward its head. The roof ridges resemble a spine and the rows of tegulation are like scales. The fifth hogback has two end-beasts, one at either end. The beasts' faces and bodies are shown in profile with jaws gaping open, their legs intersecting along the base. This is the only known hogback with end-beasts in this position. [3]
In Cornwall grave markers of the hogback type are known as coped stones. There are five known coped stones surviving, varying in their resemblance to hogbacks found elsewhere. One is found in St Buryan, another in Lanivet a third at Phillack, a fourth at St Tudy and in 2012 a fifth was excavated in Padstow. Cornish coped stones tend to be longer than normal hogbacks at over 2 metres in length, but shorter in height, and have an unusual hipped roof style. The Lanivet stone is the only known hogback in Cornwall to have beasts carved on the ends. The stones show both Scandinavian and local Cornish influence in their designs, indicating the inclusion of Cornwall in a "western British Viking-age sculptural tradition". [4]
A high cross or standing cross is a free-standing Christian cross made of stone and often richly decorated. There was a unique Early Medieval tradition in Ireland and Britain of raising large sculpted stone crosses, usually outdoors. These probably developed from earlier traditions using wood, perhaps with metalwork attachments, and earlier pagan Celtic memorial stones; the Pictish stones of Scotland may also have influenced the form. The earliest surviving examples seem to come from the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, which had been converted to Christianity by Irish missionaries; it remains unclear whether the form first developed in Ireland or Britain.
Sockburn is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Neasham, in the Darlington district, in the ceremonial county of Durham, England. It is situated at the apex of a meander of the River Tees, to the south of Darlington, known locally as the Sockburn Peninsula. Today, all that remains of the village is an early nineteenth-century mansion, a ruined church and a farmhouse built in the late eighteenth century.
Celtic art is associated with the peoples known as Celts; those who spoke the Celtic languages in Europe from pre-history through to the modern period, as well as the art of ancient peoples whose language is uncertain, but have cultural and stylistic similarities with speakers of Celtic languages.
Anglo-Saxon art covers art produced within the Anglo-Saxon period of English history, beginning with the Migration period style that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them from the continent in the 5th century, and ending in 1066 with the Norman Conquest of England, whose sophisticated art was influential in much of northern Europe. The two periods of outstanding achievement were the 7th and 8th centuries, with the metalwork and jewellery from Sutton Hoo and a series of magnificent illuminated manuscripts, and the final period after about 950, when there was a revival of English culture after the end of the Viking invasions. By the time of the Conquest the move to the Romanesque style is nearly complete. The important artistic centres, in so far as these can be established, were concentrated in the extremities of England, in Northumbria, especially in the early period, and Wessex and Kent near the south coast.
Migration Period art denotes the artwork of the Germanic peoples during the Migration period. It includes the Migration art of the Germanic tribes on the continent, as well the start of the Insular art or Hiberno-Saxon art of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic fusion in Britain and Ireland. It covers many different styles of art including the polychrome style and the animal style. After Christianization, Migration Period art developed into various schools of Early Medieval art in Western Europe which are normally classified by region, such as Anglo-Saxon art and Carolingian art, before the continent-wide styles of Romanesque art and finally Gothic art developed.
Viking art, also known commonly as Norse art, is a term widely accepted for the art of Scandinavian Norsemen and Viking settlements further afield—particularly in the British Isles and Iceland—during the Viking Age of the 8th-11th centuries. Viking art has many design elements in common with Celtic, Germanic, the later Romanesque and Eastern European art, sharing many influences with each of these traditions.
Sculptured stones is a name applied to carved stone monuments from the early Christian period excavated in various parts of the British Isles and Scandinavia. They document the conversion of these areas to Christianity
Govan Old Parish Church is the name of the original parish church serving Govan in Glasgow from the 5th or 6th century AD until 2007. In that year, the Church of Scotland united the two Govan congregations with Linthouse and established the parish church at Govan Cross, making Govan Old redundant.
Sir David Mackenzie Wilson, FBA is a British archaeologist, art historian, and museum curator, specialising in Anglo-Saxon art and the Viking Age. From 1977 until 1992 he served as the Director of the British Museum, where he had previously worked, from 1955 to 1964, as an assistant keeper. In his role as director of the museum, he became embroiled in the controversy over the ownership of the Elgin Marbles with the Greek government, engaging with a "disastrous" televised debate with Greek Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri.
Insular art, also known as Hiberno-Saxon art, was produced in the post-Roman era of Great Britain and Ireland. The term derives from insula, the Latin term for "island"; in this period Britain and Ireland shared a largely common style different from that of the rest of Europe. Art historians usually group Insular art as part of the Migration Period art movement as well as Early Medieval Western art, and it is the combination of these two traditions that gives the style its special character.
Lacertines, most commonly found in Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Insular art, are interlaces created by zoomorphic forms. While the term "lacertine" itself means "lizard-like," its use to describe interlace is a 19th-century neologism and not limited to interlace of reptilian forms. In addition to lizards, lacertine decoration often features animals such as birds, lions, and dogs.
The Easby Cross is an Anglo-Saxon sandstone standing cross from 800–820, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It originally came from Easby near Richmond in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire, where a plaster replica is kept in the church. Easby was then in the Kingdom of Northumbria. The width of the long faces at the bottom of the lowest fragment is 31 cm (12 in), with a depth of 18 cm (7.1 in), and the whole cross would originally have been up to 3 metres (9.8 ft) high.
In the visual arts, interlace is a decorative element found in medieval art. In interlace, bands or portions of other motifs are looped, braided, and knotted in complex geometric patterns, often to fill a space. Interlacing is common in the Migration period art of Northern Europe, in the early medieval Insular art of Ireland and the British Isles, and Norse art of the Early Middle Ages, and in Islamic art.
Anglo-Scandinavian is an academic term referring to the hybridisation between Norse and Anglo-Saxon cultures in Britain during the early medieval period. It remains a term and concept often used by historians and archaeologists, and in linguistic spheres.
In the early Middle Ages, there were distinct material cultures evident in the different federations and kingdoms within what is now Scotland. Pictish art was the only uniquely Scottish medieval style; it can be seen in the extensive survival of carved stones, particularly in the north and east of the country, which hold a variety of recurring images and patterns. It can also be seen in elaborate metal work that largely survives in buried hoards. Irish-Scots art from the kingdom of Dál Riata suggests that it was one of the places, as a crossroads between cultures, where the Insular style developed.
George Speake, is an English art historian and archaeologist. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford, and "a leading authority on Anglo-Saxon animal art." Currently Speake is the Anglo-Saxon Art and Iconography Specialist for the Staffordshire Hoard conservation team, and is working on the reconstruction of the Staffordshire helmet.
The Govan Stones is an internationally-important museum collection of early-medieval carved stones displayed at Govan Old Parish Church in Glasgow, Scotland.
The Leeds cross is a collection of fragments of probably tenth-century stone sculpture that has been reassembled into a cross. The fragments were found in the fabric of Leeds Minster when the tower of the old church was demolished in 1838. The architect, Robert Chantrell noticed a collection of carved stones built into the medieval architecture, some of them forming the cross. Representations of the Four Evangelists appear between distinctive interlaced decoration dating to the 10th or 11th centuries. The cross currently stands within the church and is an important example of Anglo-Saxon sculpture. It is also the most complete example of a number of depictions of the legendary smith Weland and Beaduhild, the mother of his child, from tenth-century Yorkshire.
Dr Anna Ritchie OBE, BA, PhD, FSA, Hon FSA Scot is a British archaeologist and historian.
House-shaped shrine are early medieval portable metal reliquary formed in the shape of the roof of a rectangular building. They originate from both Ireland and Scotland and mostly date from the 8th or 9th centuries. Typical example consist of a wooden core covered with silver and copper alloy plates, and were built to hold relics of saints or martyrs from the early Church era; a number held corporeal remains when found in the modern period, presumably they were parts of the saint's body. Others, including the Breac Maodhóg, held manuscripts associated with the commemorated saint. Like many Insular shrines, they were heavily reworked and embellished in the centuries following their initial construction, often with metal adornments or figures influenced by Romanesque sculpture.