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THE STONE "CELTIC" HUMAN HEAD FROM HARBY
Leslie Cram
The Harby stone human head was found by Betty Holyland in 1984 in a garden in Harby, Leicestershire, on the southwest edge of the village, NGR 7449 3085. It was lying face down on the ground in a rockery when discovered. The previous owners of the house have no knowledge of the head. The land had been a field before the house was built in the 1930s. The head is crudely made in the local ironstone and roughly oval in shape. The back is slightly rounded with chisel marks. A hole has bored by man diagonally into the back to a depth of 7 mm with diameter of 2.9 mm, this is weathered to the same extent as the rest of the head suggesting it dates back to the original sculpting (illustration 1). The sides are squared off with no features apart from rough chisel marks (illustration 2). The front has eyes and mouth hollowed into the stone, the mouth curved up in a grimfaced smile (illustration. 3). The effect resembles a face in a Halloween turnip lantern. The head has pronounced eyebrows and a moustache which are shown by incised lines. It has no beard and on the shallow forehead there is no hair. The sides of the chin are indicated by two chisel cuts into the front of the face. The nose is raised above the rest of the face and runs down from the forehead like a nose guard on a helmet. The left side of the mouth has been recently extended, as shown by the lighter colour of the stone, by an incised line running to the edge of the face, possibly accidental damage. The height of the face at its maximum from top of forehead to chin is 113 mm and the width at its maximum at the eyes 97 mm. The maximum thickness of the head is 59 mm. The width of a chisel used in making the head can be measured in places, such as the left of the nose. In all cases this is 16 mm. It appears that the sculpting of the head was done with this one tool. The head is retained in private ownership.
The British Geological Survey has generously provided the following report. "The stone head has been carved into a piece of local Marlstone Rock Formation of Jurassic age. This formation crops out at the top of the ridge about 3km to the east and south east of Harby (Carney et al. 2002, 15). The formation stretches into Lincolnshire and south as far as Banbury with rock similar to the Harby head (Hains and Horton 1969, 78 and 79). The piece of stone used may have been taken from a field or quarry on the ridge or it could have been found on the slopes below the ridge as this is an area where landslides have been active in the past and blocks of the rock will have been carried down the slope nearer to the village. The rock is a fine-grained ooidal (oolitic) ironstone that was deposited in shallow marine waters. When fresh, the rock is greenish in colour but the piece used shows the typical rusty brown weathering. Ooids or ooliths are rounded spherical grains that formed by current activity on the sea floor, building up fine layers of sediment usually around a very small nucleus grain. The Marlstone is usually fossiliferous; no large fossils are visible on the carved head but there are probably many very fine shell fragments in the rock. The Marlstone was extensively quarried for iron ore in this area from around 1880. It has also been used for building stone, being common in walls in the village including the church dating back to the thirteenth century."
The same Marlstone was quarried in Roman times at Goadby Marwood raising the possibility of the head having been sculpted using this exposed source of rock (Abbot 1956). It should also be mentioned that the head might have been found at Goadby Marwood by Mr Coy, the quarry manager who lived in Harby and recorded many of the discoveries, and brought by him to the village.
Anne Ross (1967) argued that stone heads such as this are a Romano-British continuation of a pre-Roman cult of the human head. More recently evidence has been amassed for the dates of these heads to extend into the 17th century (Billingsley, 1998). We may date the Harby head as probably Romano-British. The Harby placename is Danish (Bourne 1977,
18, Cox 2002, 93) but recent archaeological excavation and field walking has found definite Iron Age and Roman pottery and structural evidence of Roman date on the north east side of the village (Priest 2004).
Harby lies near the corner of Leicestershire where the county meets Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire and other stone Celtic heads have been found in the three counties. There is one other from Leicestershire from Oadby (Leicestershire County Council Heritage Services accession number L. A59.1961) published as Romano-British in Ross (1967, 90, pl. 25C). The curator at the time David T-D Clarke was of the opinion (noted in correspondence) that it could be Romano-British but might be a piece of architectural sculpture of Christian Anglo-Saxon or medieval date. The only stone head from Nottinghamshire was found in imported soil in a garden in Hucknall in 1983 (Nottinghamshire SMR number L10137). This head has a greatest length of 140 mm and remains in private ownership. From Lincolnshire stone heads, possibly Celtic, are reported from Great Humby and Little Humby found among piles of stones (Lincolnshire Historic Environment Record 33817 and 33818, White1976, 55; 1977, 71), and Kirton Lindsey (North Lincolnshire SMR No. 700, White1977, 71).
I am indebted to Richard Pollard for his examination of the head and comments upon the text of this note, to Virginia Baddeley (Sites and Monuments Record Officer, Nottinghamshire County Council) for information about the Celtic head from Nottinghamshire and to Mark Bennett (Senior Environmental Records Officer, Lincolnshire County Council) and Thomas Cadbury (Senior Keeper, Collections Management, The Collection) and Mike Hemblade (Archaeology Assistant, North Lincolnshire Museum) for information on the Lincolnshire heads.
Abbot, R. D. 1956 'Roman Discoveries at Goadby Marwood', Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society 32 17 - 35.
Billingsley, John, 1998, Stony Gaze: Investigating Celtic Heads. Chieveley : Capall Bann.
Bourne, Jill, 1977, Place names of Leicestershire and Rutland, Leicester : Leicestershire Libraries & Information Service.
Carney, J. N., K. Ambrose and A. Brandon, 2002, Geology of the Melton Mowbray district, Keyworth : British Geological Survey.
Hains, B. A. and A. Horton, 1969 British Regional Geology : Central England, London : HMSO.
Cox, Barrie 2002 The Place-names of Leicestershire, part two,
Framland Hundred, Nottingham : English Place-name Society.
Priest, Vicki, 2004 Archaeological Evaluations on land at 16 Pinfold Lane, Harby, Leicestershire, Report 2004 - 099, Leicester : University of Leicester Archaeological Services.
Ross, Anne, 1967 Pagan Celtic Britain, London : Routledge & K. Paul.
White, A. J., ed. 1976 'Archaeology in Lincolnshire and South Humberside, 1975' Lincolnshire History and Archaeology 11 55.
White, A. J., ed. 1977 'Archaeology in Lincolnshire and South Humberside, 1976' Lincolnshire History and Archaeology 12 71.
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