A black and white photo of a Sheela Na Gig female figure carved in stone and found mounted on the exterior wall of the church. Background text below is by Candy Bedworth and can be found on the church website.
No-one can definitively explain the exact purpose of the stone carvings. Sheela Na Gig is generally believed to be a pre-Christian deity or fertility symbol. She almost always has exaggerated genitalia. She is depicted with a fruitful womb, but with an older, crone head. Is this the Earth goddess who both births us, and then takes us in death?
The figures are often depicted in a birthing position. There are suggestions that they are a folklore talisman used for promoting a successful birth – a mascot of the midwife if you will. As remember, in the past many women would have died during childbirth.
Still others suggest they are simply part of the Romanesque sculptural style of art. In which, gargoyles and other fantastical creatures were used in the decoration of both churches and secular buildings. They may have been comical in-jokes by stone-masons, or a magical protection used to scare away evil.
The Sheela Na Gig, Church of St Mary and St David, Kilpeck Herefordshire.
📷 03.06.2017
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