The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture identifies, records and publishes in a consistent format, English sculpture dating from the 7th to the 11th centuries. Much of this material was previously unpublished, and is of crucial importance in helping identify the earliest settlements and artistic achievements of the early medieval and Pre-Norman English. The Corpus documents the earliest Christian field monuments from free-standing carved crosses and innovative decorative elements, to grave-markers.

From Books to Online

In recent years, with the support of the AHRC, British Academy and the Aurelius Trust, the project has sought to release the data from all volumes online, as a searchable catalogue, accompanied by digital images. We have been working with the Archaeological Data Service to develop a new searchable platform and we will shortly be migrating to that new site.

IMPORTANT: Please note that as a result this site and the online searchable corpus will be unavailable for a few months while the migration of the datasets and searchable catalogues are moved over to the Archaeology Data Service.

The site and catalogues will not be accessible between the 1st January 2026 and the 30th April 2026. An interim landing page will be available at www.ascorpus.ac.uk on the Durham University website. Users can still request information, including high resolution images and .pdfs of previous volumes, by emailing corpus@durham.ac.uk

Project Sponsors

The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Headley Trust, part of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, and by the British Academy, with additional funding from the Pilgrim Trust. Funding from the AHRC will now enable the completion of the project in book and digital form and facilitate a series of workshops and a final project conference. The online release of volumes has been made possible by support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (1999-2004), The British Academy (ongoing), The Aurelius Trust (2013-14) and Durham University (2013). The full online release of our digital data has now been made possible by substantial funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.