Gargoyles - St Andrew - Great Rollright, Oxfordshire
Posted by: SMacB
N 51° 58.856 W 001° 31.540
30U E 601254 N 5759943
St Andrew's church, Great Rollright, with winged gargoyles on the tower, rosettes and grotesques on the corbel-table of the south aisle and porch.
Waymark Code: WM13DZ6
Location: Southern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 11/19/2020
Views: 8
St Andrew's church, Great Rollright, with winged gargoyles on the tower, rosettes and grotesques on the corbel-table of the south aisle and porch.
Church towers were originally places of defence; later they were built more to impress, and to provide travellers with a landmark. St Andrew’s tower dates from around 1400. Adorned with 8 gargoyles below the parapet.
"Around the top of the porch, and extending east and west round the south aisle, runs a corbel table of 47 carvings, a mixture of human faces (perhaps benefactors?), grotesques, animals and rosettes. The carvers’ fancy roved freely here, as it did in portraying the Green Man and Green Woman (faces amidst growing vegetation, a memory of pre-Christian folklore) as stops on the westernmost window. Green Men are common in medieval stonework, and this one’s features were still clearly visible a hundred years ago; Green Women are much rarer."
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