Bucranium

Guardians: The Sleep of Reason

When we were in Bristol recently we visited the American Museum near Bath. Mooching around Claverton Manor, the early 19th century building that houses the main collection, my eye was suddenly grabbed by the sort of weird detail that always excites my attention. A decorative plaster frieze on a staircase that I had originally thought to consist of urns linked by drapery turned out, on closer inspection, to be made up of the skulls of cattle. WTF? I had never seen (or, at least, never noticed) such a thing before, and naturally took care to photograph it. Given this was the American Museum, I was put in mind of the archetypal skull nailed on a ranch-sign, and of those photographs of colossal heaps of buffalo skulls slaughtered on the Plains in the late 19th century [1]. So it seemed quite appropriate, possibly even some witty site-specific twist on a classical theme.

The next day, it was a toss-up whether we would visit Dyrham Park in the Cotswolds or Lacock Abbey near Chippenham (the Fox Talbot Museum); looking at the distances involved, Dyrham Park won. To my surprise, wandering around the grand but dingy house that afternoon, my attention was drawn to yet another, similar frieze of bovine skulls, this time around a plinth, linked by garlands of leaves. It was beginning to seem likely that this was not some unique Western-themed conceit, but an architectural thing (sorry, I am becoming over-addicted to "thing"). I resolved to look it up.

It seems what I had come across were examples of a bucranium frieze. No, not some rare element which causes hair-loss in superheroes, but a curious decorative representation of the sacrifices of oxen that took place in classical times. Constantly, it seems, at any and every auspicious opportunity, though I doubt if the quantities of skulls ever approached those heaped up on the American Plains. All the same, to the silence and stillness of those Keatsian Grecian urns must also be added the absent stench of spilled blood and butchery, wafting over everything like a battlefield.

Strangely, it seems I was fated to encounter a second example that day, whichever choice of outing we had made, as one of the other places cited as an example of the use of bucrania in English neoclassical architecture is Lacock Abbey. Although, now I've noticed them, I expect they'll probably be turning up everywhere I go. Which doesn't make them any less weird as a choice for interior decoration.

1.  Not to mention the traditional cow skull that, in cartoons, always marks the onset of desert (and, in Popeye, intones, "You'll be s-o-o-o-ry!", which I believe was a 1940s catchphrase in the USA, derived from the TV show "Take It Or Leave It").