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46 Great Lane, Greetham, Rutland

Location
46 Great Ln, Greetham, Oakham LE15 7NG, UK (52°43′11″N, 0°37′43″W)
Greetham
SK 92715 14450
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Rutland
now Rutland
  • Thomas E. Russo
  • Thomas E. Russo
19 October 2011

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=122354.

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Feature Sets
Description

At 46 Great Lane is a two-storey private residence made with ashlar masonry walls and a slate roof. Fragments of Romanesque sculpture are inserted in the S wall: a voussoir, a corbel, a flared cross relief and a fragment with saltire crosses, intersecting arches and rope mold.

History

This house was built by Thomas Charity Halliday around 1850. Halliday was a stonemason who worked on church restorations throughout the area. There are a number a medieval stone sculpture fragments from his restoration sites reset in the exterior walls of what once the stonemasons workshop, including these Romanesque fragments.

Features

Exterior Features

Exterior Decoration

Miscellaneous
Comments/Opinions

Halliday reset the various corbels to function as corbels in his mid-19th-century façade design. Given this, the central location of the voussoir with the human face above the main doorway suggests that it too may once have been a keystone in an arch. The reset corbel may represent an animal face, but the lack of details make it difficult to be sure. It is not possible to say how the partial fragment with saltire crosses, intersecting arches, and rope mold functioned, but a likely candidate could be as the lower part of a tympanum – examples of Romanesque tympana with saltire crosses at their bases can be found at St. Mary, Tissington in Derbyshire and St. George, Kencot in Oxfordshire. Another possibility could be as a side of a square baptismal font, such as that at St Peter, Reighton in Yorkshire with saltire crosses, or in reference to the intersecting arches, like those at St. Mary the Virgin, Lifton in Devon and at St. Michael’s, Crambe in Yorkshire. Some of the other fragments in the S wall are in good condition, which raises the question of why Halliday removed them in the first place.

Bibliography

F. Bond, Fonts and Font Covers, vol. 1, London: Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press, 1908, 39, 43, 148-149, 204.

  1. Keyser, A List of Norman Tympana and Lintels, London: Elliot Stock, 1927, xxxii-xxxiii, xliii.

R. Ovens, Greetham Village Walk, Rutland Local History & Record Society, September 1999 (updated 2020); www.rutlandhistory.org/walks/greetham4.pdf - accessed 23 July 2024.

N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Leicestershire and Rutland. London: Penguin, 1960 (1998), 473.

Rutland’s Hidden Gems, Rutland Pride, July 9, 2021; www.pridemagazines.co.uk/rutland/highlights/rutlands-hidden-gems/07-2021 - access 23 July 2024.