URSS ABSTRACT
The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland (CRSBI) is in the process of documenting
the Romanesque sculpture of every county. This project aims to create an online database for
students and scholars, as well as the general public, to use in future and to some extent update the
work that Nikolaus Pevsner completed in the late twentieth century. This is an important endeavour
to preserve the early history of the British Isles, protect these examples of Romanesque sculpture
against weathering and thieves alike. Our project was to compile the entries for Leicestershire and
involved a system of research, fieldwork and online cataloguing which enabled us to improve key
skills necessary in our field of work as well as contribute to an established academic research
scheme.
The term ‘Romanesque’ (or ‘Norman’) traditionally refers to stonework with origins between 1066
and 1200. It is so-called because of the features it shares with Roman architecture, such as round
arches. Because sculpture is hard to date, there are specific criteria that are used instead to identify
the Romanesque style. In a team of four History of Art students and our supervisor, I have helped
complete the research for Leicestershire. Pevsner’s Buildings of England: Leicestershire and Rutland
was used to identify the relevant buildings. Sculpture was located primarily in Leicestershire’s parish
churches on any number of architectural features, including capitals, fonts, doorways, chancel
arches, and corbel tables. A range of sculpture was recorded, from specimens of the Anglo-Norman
overlap to those foreshadowing Early English Gothic. There are strict guidelines for every type of
feature on the CRSBI database: for a door frame, for example, a number of measurements are
required, as well as the number of orders and description of their ornament, the type of stone, and
any restoration. Consistency allows comparisons to be made and means the information on the
database will be clear, reliable and easy for researchers to use. During the project we visited nearly
sixty sites, recording elements including sculpted portals, arcades, fonts and sections of masonry.
Often these pieces were no longer in situ or had been restored which posed challenges in regards to
dating.