The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum was named after Sir Alfred Herbert, who donated £100,000 in 1938 to pay for the building of a new art gallery and museum for the town. The architect was to be Albert Herbert, a cousin of the founder, but the blitz that left the town in ruins put a stop to the project. It was taken up again in 1954, Sir Alfred laying the foundation stone and contributing another £100,000, and the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum was at last opened to the public in 1960, by Sir Alfred's widow Lady Herbert. A dramatic two-phase rebuilding programmet was carried out between 2005-08 by the architects Pringle, Richards, Sharrat, and the museum won the Guardian Family Frendly Museum award in 2010. In addition to the museum and art gallery, it houses the records archive, and a learning centre, media studio and creative arts facility.

This report describes two stone heads which had been in a garden in Coventry for several decades. When the house owners moved, they contacted the Herbert, wishing to place them with the museum. The provenance is vague, but the owners believed that they were collected by a mayor of Coventry from the area of the cathedral after World War II.

Oral evidence implies that the heads were from the cathedral site. The medieval parish church of St Michael, which was elevated to cathedral status in 1918, was begun in the late 14thc., and this is the building which was bombed in 1940. These heads probably originate from an earlier cathedral on an adjacent site. In 1102 Bishop Robert de Limesey moved his see from Chester to create a joint Bishopric of Coventry and Lichfield. Thus the late-Saxon monastery of St Mary became a Cathedral Priory, and was rebuilt as a Romanesque cathedral during a long 12thc campaign. This cathedral was demolished at the Reformation, and what little is known about its architecture can conveniently be seen in Victoria County History. 8 (1969).

Both heads were originally non-supporting carvings projecting from a wall surface, and the commonest situation in which these features occur is as apex heads above a doorway or arch, as seen on the Monks' doorway and the blocked New Vestry doorway at Ely Cathedral. Another possibility is a label stop, and Leckhampstead (Buckinghamshire) has both features. The first head is extremely classicizing, with its refined features and naturalistic hair, and while the second appears more typically Romanesque, it does have identical hair and can be confidently attributed to the same proficient workshop. In its general form and especially the treatment of the eyes, Head 1 resembles the corbel from St Mary's, Bedford now in the Cecil Higgins Museum, reasonably dated c.1160. The hair on the brow of Head 2 is also similar to the Bedford head, but a slightly later date of c.1160-80 is suggested on account of the classiczing treatment of Head 1's hair.