Publications

There are currently fifteen published Corpus volumes, the very latest on the East Midlands published in 2026 and the very first (County Durham and Northumberland) published in 1984. Each volume consists of a fully illustrated catalogue of all known sculpture in the named region (defined according to pre-1974 English county boundaries). As well as providing consistent data and an informed analysis of the sculpture itself, each volume also includes several chapters covering subjects such as the form and distribution of motifs, historical background and regional geology.

Volumes still in print can be purchased from Liverpool University Press

Volume XV: East Midlands, 2026
Rosemary Cramp, Jane Hawkes, and Joanna Story

This is the penultimate volume in the series. The volume surveys the counties of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Rutland and includes the Soke of Peterborough. Drawing on a catalogue of some 700 sculptural fragments, the volume covers a remarkable array of sculptures including some of the most exceptional survivals of the pre-Viking era.

Volume XIV: Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire 2023
Paul Everson and David Stocker

This volume is the third by CASSS specialists and authors Professor Paul Everson and Professor David Stocker. This volume surveys the historic counties of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. The great majority of stone sculpture from these two counties belongs to the final century of Anglo-Saxon England, during which period sculpture production was deeply influenced by rapidly expanding ecclesiastical societies and the great monasteries of Peterborough and Ely.

Volume XIII: Derbyshire and Staffordshire 2018
Jane Hawkes and Phil Sidebottom

This volume represents a synthesis of resent research and a complete survey of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian sculpture of the two counties of Derbyshire and Staffordshire. It shows that in the early Middle Ages Derbyshire and Staffordshire offered a vibrant milieu in which influential artistic ideas could develop and spread, not just in carved stone but also in manuscripts, metalwork and other materials.

Vol XII: Nottinghamshire, 2016
Paul Everson and David Stocker

Carved and decorated stonework is a rare survival from the period before the Norman Conquest. In Nottinghamshire it survives as large crosses and as small fragments – to be found in churches, in public spaces and in museum collections. In this discussion of the sculptural survivals in the county, Nottinghamshire emerges with a distinctive identity in the pre-conquest period, having strong connections both with the Mercian state to its south and with the Northumbrians to the north.

Vol XI: Cornwall, 2015
Ann Preston-Jones and Elisabeth Okasha

This volume surveys the county of Cornwall and provides an analytical catalogue of its early sculpture, highlighting the particular distinctiveness of Cornish sculpture compared to other regions. The relationship of the Cornish sculpture to monuments in Wales, Ireland and Western Britain is of particular interest given Cornwall’s position as a peninsula jutting into the western seaways. In this context, the potential role of Scandinavian influence is considered against the absence of evidence for Scandinavian settlement in Cornwall.

Vol X: The West Midlands, 2012
Richard Bryant, Michael Hare and Carolyn Heighway

Dealing with the sculptures of the western Midland counties of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire, this volume details important collections of material from Gloucester, Deerhurst and Shrewsbury, as well as individual sculpture. Some of the early monuments from the western borders of the study area are linked to the traditions of the Celtic churches of the west, but much of the material was carved at a time when Mercian art was at its zenith in the late eighth to early tenth centuries.

Vol IX: Cheshire and Lancashire, 2010
Richard N. Bailey

This volume provides a full analytical catalogue of all known pre-Norman sculpture from this region. As little documentary evidence survives from the area, the sculpture is vital to understanding the early development of the Church, the shifting relationships between communities, and the ways in which political affiliations gave access to a variety of cultural centres across England, Ireland, mainland Europe and Scandinavia.

Vol VIII: Western Yorkshire, 2008
Elizabeth Coatsworth

The monuments in the historic West Riding of Yorkshire include important collections from Dewsbury, Ilkley, Leeds and Otley, containing individual pieces of the highest quality; and there are fine examples of early architectural sculpture at Ledsham and Rothwell. Many of the finest monuments are connected with important ecclesiastical estates, such as Ripon; the iconography of the sculptures tells us about how these estates continued into the Anglo-Scandinavian period.

Vol VII: South West England, 2006
Rosemary Cramp

Volume VII surveys the historic south-western counties of Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire . The Anglo-Saxon sculpture of Wessex is less well-known as a whole that that of the other major kingdoms, but this volume (combined with Volume IV, South-East England) brings together all the monuments from the region so that the quality of West-Saxon sculpture can be appreciated fully for the first time.

Vol VI: Northern Yorkshire, 2002
James Lang

This volume surveys the sculpture in the historic North Riding of Yorkshire (excluding those parts already covered in Volume III). The total of some 400 carvings include important pre-Viking Age monuments, such as the crosses at Croft, Easby and Masham demonstrate the rich and diverse visual heritage of Northern Yorkshire in the pre-Conquest period.

Vol V: Lincolnshire, 1999
Paul Everson and David Stocker

The wealth of pre-Conquest sculpture in Lincolnshire, recorded here definitively for the first time, forms a crucial source for our understanding of the Anglo-Scandinavian period in this region. Several major groups of sculpture are identified, extending across the East Midlands in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The authors discuss how this material provides evidence for settlement and administrative structures, both lay and clerical, in this part of the Danelaw.

Vol IV: South-East England, 1995
Dominic Tweddle, Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølby-Biddle

The Reculver cross from Kent and the large collection of sculpture from the important excavations at Winchester Old Minster are among many masterpieces reviewed in detail here, with many of the pieces being published for the first time.

The significance of the material, in European terms, is that it displayed a flowering of pre-Romanesque art in the tenth and eleventh centuries, not only in the well-known Winchester Style of ornament but in architectural development.

Vol III: York and Eastern Yorkshire, 1991
James Lang

The quantity and range of carvings revealed by recent excavations at York have transformed our appreciation of the sculpture from this major medieval centre. Many pieces are published for the first time, including a remarkable series of slabs discovered in situ in the Minster cemetery. The carvings speak of a fusion of cultural impulses over a period when York was the political and economic focus of renewed settlement.

Vol II: Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire-North-of-the-Sands, 1988
Richard N. Bailey and Rosemary Cramp

Early medieval Cumbria remains in many ways an enigma: it is rarely mentioned in documentary sources; and settlement sites of the period continue to elude the archaeologist. For the principal visible evidence of human activity in the area in the Dark Ages, one must turn to the series of stone sculptures, which have here been systematically collected and made fully accessible in print for the first time.

Vol I: County Durham and Northumberland, 1984
Rosemary Cramp

Volume I covers the pre-1974 counties of Durham and Northumberland – the heartland of the old Northumbrian kingdom of Bernicia. The sculpture reflects the changing fortunes of this area, from the monastic colonization in the late 7th century, when important centres such as Lindisfarne, Hexham, Wearmouth and Jarrow were established, through the zenith of its cultural flowering in the 8th, when Anglo-Saxon carvers produced monuments of a quality scarcely matched in Europe, to subsequent decline.