Stone head 29: corbel

Grotesque corbel, Quakers Friars, Broadmead, Bristol
This is now outside, but originally would have been supporting a roof

Stone head 26: face the wall

Stone face, Abergavenny, Monmouthshire
To come face to face with this was a bit of a shock…

Stone head 13

Girning Romanesque stone head, British Museum

This grotesque is a girning exhibitionist, a face-puller; if you look carefully,

Stone head 11

A pair of waterspout gargoyles out of Breughel: All Saints, Great Chesterford, Essex

Stone head 5

Newport Church, Pembrokeshire

Lozenge-shaped eyes, ovoid face, slit mouth: this is a classic ‘Celtic’ head.

Although St Mary’s church in Newport, Pembrokeshire was given the usual Victorian makeover, this carving from the previous structure survived by being placed discreetly behind the chancel arch.
Presumably so as not so offend Victorian aesthetics.
Any other medieval sculpture sadly now seems lost to us.

I wonder if the nostrils have been added subsequently: such stone heads often just had a bulbous nose.
It’s very likely this one was damaged by an excess of Puritan zeal.

Portals 8

Leonard Lane, off Small Street, Bristol

The curve of this passageway betrays its former existence as a lane backing onto the former city walls, the latter now a mere memory.

A veritable slice through history is revealed, from the 21st-century Centrespace boards to the 19th century and beyond: cobbles; curved brick piers; the timbers of the jetty thrown over the lane; the distant gated brick archway; the worn features of the bearded stone head keystone atop the nearer arch.

Just the intrusive (and rather pointless) no-parking yellow lines to remind us of the present.

Caryatid

A terracotta plant holder in Wales, via England and, ultimately, Italy.

Strictly speaking this is not a stone but a ‘burnt earth’ head.
Based on the top portion of a caryatid figure, a column in the shape of a draped female which supports an entablature on a classical temple.

She looks quite smug, as though she’s chuffed she’s managed to survive ten or more years of British winter frosts.

Stone head 3: companion

The companion to Stone Head 2, another of the ancient faces on the 15th-century Refectory in Congresbury, North Somerset.

He looks to be frozen in the act of saying something witty.
I wish I had something witty to add to this, but I’ll leave it to others to think up an appropriate comment.

Stone head 2: vicarage

Stone head, Congresbury, Somerset

One of many stone heads on the Refectory, the former vicarage, built in the 15th century.
This is such an individual face it’s tempting to believe this is an actual portrait of someone connected with the village church.

Stone head 1: gob

Waterspout, St Davids Cathedral, Pembrokeshire, Wales

Though this could be a Victorian example, the medieval mind was no less scatological than modern schoolkids: the idea of a devil from hell gobbing at you from a height clearly appealed to certain mentalities.

Not mine. Obviously.