For many years, I have had a fascination with misericords, and it is my hope that this website will enable people who may either not know anything about misericords, or only know of a few examples to see the great variety of misericords that still exist today. However, as this site has expanded, so have my hopes ☺ - Now I hope that all who have an interest in misericords, whether passing, or deeply learned will enjoy (and critique) this site.
As you have probably found, there are many sites out there that are either dedicated to misericords at one or two locations, or have misericords as a small subsection of of their site, I have gone to the opposite extreme, by ignoring, photographically, almost all other features of these churches, cathedrals and colleges except for a few carvings or overview pictures. Other sites have very studious list of the “Corpus of Misericords”, but tend not to have many pictures, I can only say that these are fascinating in their own right, but to my mind, do not give the immediacy of photos or show the humour that so many misericords posess, to that end, I have added either a block of descriptions in the misericord photo page, or where there are more than about 5 misericords at a location, I have added a separate pop-up “Corpus of Misericords” page, which gives you the choice of just enjoying the photos, or reading the corpus at the same time . A final group seem to be woodcarving sites, which although giving some great information on individual wood carvings or a misericord, do not give much contextual information and seem much more heavily aimed at carvers. I am not an historian, but an engineer with a passion for photography and misericords in particular. I must also plead guilty to occasionally letting my sense of the ridiculous get in the way of a truly studious work - I hope you’ll forgive me
I have added a timeline and gazetteer of misericords Although it is not complete, yet, with over 120 misericord reference points, it already shows some nice clear trends and some contradictions at a glance. As you would expect, the majority of the misericords are medieval, happily, however, there are far more post medieval misericords than one would expect.
With over 50 years of misericord photography between us, and having over 7500 misericord images uploaded so far, from nearly 150 sites (with photos of at least another 220 sites in the UK, 140 in continental Europe and 2 sites in the USA still to add Looks like I need to give up the day job) I hope that this website will be regarded as the default resource for those researching misericords.
For ease of use, I have divided this site into misericords at Cathedrals in the UK, misericords at any UK sites other than Cathedrals which is then subdivided by region (apologies to those people who don’t think they are in a particular region) and misericords at any sites outside the UK Beyond that, I have now separated the international misericords by country.
If you find that your church has misericords, but I haven't got them in my list or you would like me to prioritise getting the details of your favourite church on the site, or as has already happened, if you find any mistakes in my numbering, or descriptions - there are times when I might be guilty of perpetuating a “Wiki myth”, please email me via the contacts page
Sorry if I've missed you!
The web’s primary resource for misericords.
Misericord facts and photos from nearly 150 locations worldwide.
