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Abstract
The works of the early twelfth-century Herefordshire School of church builders and sculptors have long been recognized as the most original of their time, yet no previous study has attempted to understand the meanings of these lively images. By looking at the way our understanding of the works of the Herefordshire School has evolved from the twelfth-century listings in Domesday Book, through the reverent notices of early antiquarians, to the twentieth-century concerns with "scientific" formal analysis, we see how the sculptures were removed from their original social and physical contexts and fragmented into meaningless decorative bits. This study looks at the sculptures as integral parts of the twelfth-century physical and social landscape, and in doing so, recovers at least a large part of their original meanings.
Chapter Two begins with a consideration of the identities of the churches themselves, finding that there are actually two distinct groups of churches: those that descended from ancient minster churches and kept the ancient corporate pastoral identity, and the seigneurial churches that were associated with a magnate's castle complex and partook of the identity of the lord himself. The pastoral churches, Leominster, Fownhope, Rock, Stottesdon, and Chaddesley Corbett, are found to have sculptures easily understood in terms of their ancient corporate pastoral identities.
Chapters Three through Six examine the source and nature of the seigneurial church in terms of those churches built by the Herefordshire School and its patrons. After clarifying the role of the seigneurial church in Chapter Three, Chapter Four looks at the most famous of these churches, Kilpeck. Chapter Five considers Shobdon, and Chapter Six discusses the other seigneurial churches and fonts executed by the School. All of these churches and fonts have sculpture informed by the patrons' concern with knightly sins of violence and lust and their relationship with God. While broadly similar, however, each church also reflects its patron's unique identity and concerns; its sculpture is the visual voice of each individual church, the stones that cry out.