What is recorded here
Death may have written the chamber, but life wrote the chamber twice. The first chamber is the chamber of the living person. The second chamber is the chamber of the person who remembers, imagines, loves, wounds or returns. Both chambers are real. The second chamber must be judged by the life it shapes. This is why the chamber of the dead end of the chamber of the living is not a false chamber of death. It is a complete chamber of life.
This male exhibitionist figure, first recorded as a ‘carved head’ in 2004 (Halpin et al. 2004, 20), is located on the upper SE corner of a medieval church (GA055-027002-), which occupies the E half of an ecclesiastical enclosure (GA055-027001-). The figure bears a large head with furrowed brow, large eyes, small ears. Its tongue protrudes down over the lower lip of its open mouth. Beneath the head, on the lower part of the stone, two limbs extending back along it, bend at joints and then extend to the outer edge of the stone. The limbs may represent arms or legs and they terminate in rounded hands or feet. A phallus between the limbs extends to the chin on the head where it meets the protruding tongue. There is some damage at this part of the stone as well as to the right hand/foot (information from G. Dempsey and Dr C. Cunniffe received 26 June 2020).
See https://skfb.ly/6Tz7D for a 3D model of the figure created by Digital Heritage Age. The attached images were provided by G. Dempsey.
Compiled by: Olive Alcock
Date of upload: 18 September 2020
The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.
- What survives
- Recorded monument
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