Soane Museum Study Group - Dr Meg Boulton

Dr Meg Boulton (University of York) presents her work on Anglo-Saxon Churches.

Refreshments will be available. All are welcome. 
Title 
Flanked by Serpents, Carved in Stone, Encased in Lead: Considering the symbolic significance of ecclesiastical thresholds and coverings in Anglo-Saxon Churches
Abstract
The material significance of the construction of Anglo-Saxon Churches in the wake of the Augustinian mission is a much-studied aspect of the architectural history of Anglo-Saxon England. The ubiquitous associations between Rome and Stone are a common aspect of scholarly discussion surrounding these buildings and structures. Building on these established understandings of symbolic significance and material importance, this paper moves from the macro context of stone, that traditionally shapes the identity of these ecclesial structures, to a more micro encounter with their sacred spaces – looking at their surfaces, thresholds and coverings; at the extant materials that provide an immediate encounter for those viewing them in a contemporary context, but also considering those adornments now only perceived in textural accounts to consider in detail the material identities, forms and concepts that shaped sacred spaces in Anglo-Saxon England. These complex material identities and understandings rooted in socio-political contexts were widely borrowed by the Church to construct its specific identity and they contained echoic and deliberate resonances with materials of past sacred structures and the envisioned eschatological site of the heavenly kingdom to come, carrying significances across time and space.Speaker
Dr Meg Boulton graduates from the University of York in 2013 after completing her AHRC-funded PhD on the conceptualisation of sacred space in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria from the 6th-9th centuries, working with Professor Jane Hawkes. She is currently working as an independent scholar lecturing in Art and Architectural History, Visual Culture and Museology at Oxford University’s Centre for continuing Education and the University of Buckingham. She teaches European Studies on the Continent on a study abroad programme for the University of the South and Rhodes College. She has several publications to date and recently co-edited a volume entitled The Art, Literature and Material Culture of the Middle Ages: Transition, Transformation and Taxonomy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015) and is currently working on her monograph Visualising Jerusalem in Anglo-Saxon England.

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