Appendix E item (overlap architectural sculpture).

Set of twenty-six arcade pier capitals plus two crossing pier capitals. The in situ capitals which stand on the half-round responds to the arcade arches on both sides of the original nave at Blyth Priory are famous examples of the earliest phase of Anglo-Norman architectural sculpture (most recently Coffman and Thurlby 2001, 64–9). The great majority have simple, paired, broad-leaf forms, terminating in small, precisely rolled, volutes at the angles. In a single capital in the south arcade (the western capital in the fourth bay from west) the volutes are replaced with miniature heads. Towards the eastern ends of both arcades, the leaves have no volutes at all, and the eastern respond of the south arcade retains its original painted foliate decoration in red ochre. The two capitals to the western arch of the original crossing are also of this type, though no longer accessible. Where the leaves divide in the centres of most of the capitals, crude faces are placed, which show a variety of different facial characteristics, suggesting different sculptors' hands. These capitals are discussed further on p. 70 above.

The priory was founded in 1088 and it is likely that the capitals were carved between then and about 1100 (Clapham 1934, 120, 135; Fernie 2000, 278; Coffman and Thurlby 2001). In the form taken by their volutes, they are very comparable to those of about 1090 on the western block of Lincoln Cathedral (Stocker and Everson 2006, 50–2).