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Medieval Alabasters from Naworth Castle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Eric Maclagan
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Extract

The alabaster reliefs which I have the privilege of laying before the Society this evening are a miscellaneous collection, arbitrarily grouped together on three slabs of slate painted a deep blue. There is no reason to suppose that any of the tables or images, altogether nine in number, had any original connexion with one another. They have been for many years fastened to the walls of the chapel of Naworth Castle in Cumberland, where they were noticed last year by our President, who was good enough to call my attention to them. Lady Carlisle very obligingly brought them up to London, and I undertook to have the modern paint in which they were smothered removed at the Victoria and Albert Museum; it is to Lady Carlisle's kindness in allowing them to remain in my charge for some months that we owe the opportunity of looking at them this evening. So far as I know, no facts as to their previous history are ascertainable.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , October 1932 , pp. 407 - 410
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1932

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References

page 409 note 1 By Micklethwaite in his classical notes on the Imagery of Henry the Seventh's Chapel in Archaeologia, xlvii (1882–1883), p. 374Google Scholar.

page 409 note 1 I have now little doubt that this is not originally a separate image, but the right-hand side of a table representing St. Katherine in prison visited by our Lord, similar to the one in the possession of the Society (No. 61 in the Exhibition of English Medieval Alabaster Work, 1910) or to the others which form part of the St. Katharine altar-piece in the church of St. Mary at Fuenterrabia (Burlington Magazine, xxxvi (1920), pp. 61, 62)Google Scholar and the church of St. Katharine at Venice (Archaeological Journ., lxvii (1910), pp. 67, 68)Google Scholar.

page 410 note 1 Since the above communication was written my attention has been called to a previous publication of the alabasters at Naworth by our former Fellow Chancellor R. S. Ferguson, read at that place in August 1879, and published in the Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, iv (1878–1879), pp. 510–12Google Scholar. Mr. Ferguson states that these carvings have been variously said to have come from Kirkoswald and from Lanercost, more probably the former. The table of the Ascension is identified as the Assumption; the nun as St. Catherine; the crowned figure holding a crowned head as King Oswy; and the smaller standing figure of Christ as St. Thomas.