Polychrome Stone Audit

These pages contain a record of all the architectural fragments from English Heritage properties which retain traces of their original painted decoration.

These objects have never been looked at in detail before, and have revealed an unsuspected wealth of information about how the buildings were decorated originally. This information has the potential to change our understanding of the appearance of medieval religious and secular buildings, and is particularly relevant if you are an architectural historian, archaeologist, curator or conservator.

The popular conception of plain stone or whitewashed interiors needs to be replaced by one in which many surfaces were enriched with colour. Mouldings and capitals bear traces of vivid colours, as do fragments of figurative and decorative carving. The medieval world was not monochrome.

View the entire Polychrome Stone Audit.

The Audit contains a basic catalogue of all the polychrome stone objects in English Heritage's collections, complete as at April 2002. It is simply a list of objects and does not attempt a detailed interpretation of their function and significance; it is intended to be a tool providing greater access to the collection. The catalogue is organised by English Heritage region and site of origin, and lists for each object:

Site of origin
EH inventory number (or audit number if not known)
Storage location (usually site museum or EH regional store)
Simple name
Stone type
Extant colour(s)
Significance score (see note 1 below)
% paint remaining
Architectural feature from which the object comes (if known)
Date
Other ID (eg context, finds number, old inventory number)
Special features/remarks
Size
Damage factors (see note 2 below)
Interventive condition score (see note 3 below)
Proposed treatment (see note 4 below)
Estimated time for treatment
Preventive condition score (see note 3 below)
Proposed treatment (see note 4 below)
Estimated time for treatment
Condition comment
Treatment comment
One or more photographs