The Corpus volume for the historic West Riding of Yorkshire is a welcome sight, so much so that even a Yorkshireman can forgive the title. Why the Corpus, elsewhere based on the historic counties of England, should choose to rename the West Riding of Yorkshire is baffling; is this entertaining policy to be followed elsewhere? Be that as it may, it is plain from the text that the volume is dealing with the West Riding, whose grisly dismemberment is recorded in Table 1.

The West Riding has sixty-three sites representing between them some 194 monuments. Of these sites, thirty-six have produced only a single sculpture, eighteen have yielded between two and five, three have produced between five and ten sculptures, and only six have more than ten. The range and quality of the material varies enormously, but it includes such iconic pieces as the Otley crosses and the Weston Viking figure, as well as high-quality and important material, which is much less well studied, like the works from Rothwell or Little Ouseburn. All of this has been meticulously catalogued by Coatsworth to standard Corpus format: present location, evidence for discovery, dimensions, present condition, description, discussion and references. Every decorated face of every piece is illustrated by a photograph to a standard scale, and there are enlarged images of key pieces. As usual, there is a catalogue of material of uncertain date, also illustrated. Some of this material is interesting, notably the fonts at High Hoyland and Cawthorne, where the sculptor appears to have been looking at a set of canon tables. There are also catalogues of material wrongly associated with the pre-Conquest period, and of material now lost. The form and motif table is also useful. This is a judicious, balanced and, in many places, fascinating catalogue.

The main body of the text covers, in Corpus fashion, earlier research, the historical background to the sculpture, regional geology, the forms of sculpture, their decoration, figural ornament, distribution and dating, and their inscriptions. As might be expected from Coatsworth, the section on figural sculpture is particularly strong in an overall analytical text packed with important insights. Of particular interest, at least to this reviewer, is the observation that textiles appear to have been used as sources for some of the motifs deployed on sculpture. This is particularly the case with Rothwell 1 where the uncanny resemblance to the arcades of the Maaseik embroideries is noted. Sometimes the argument is not pressed far enough. Coatsworth draws comparisons with metalwork to explain the different surface treatments and textures on Rothwell 1, but equally the sculptor may have been representing the different textures of embroidery: perhaps the high-relief interlace imitated gold couching and the incised panel motifs represented lower relief stem stitch. There are also places where the reader is left bewildered as to what conclusions Coatsworth is reaching. How does she think the Dewsbury cross, Dewsbury 1, and its analogues should be reconstructed?

The key section of the analytical text, on the overall distribution and dating of the sculptures, is bound to provoke argument. For example, while some of the Ripon material, such as Ripon 10, might be as early as St Wilfrid, the evidence for other pieces, such as the use of simple chevron ornament, seems thin. Equally, it is difficult to accept that Ledsham 3a belongs as early as the seventh century or even the beginning of the eighth century. Plant ornament makes its first appearance in manuscript art in the late eighth century, and while its appearance in the sculptural tradition may be earlier, where is the solid independent evidence for such dating? Moreover, the argument over whether the Ledsham 3a is pre-Conquest at all, rather than a nineteenth-century invention, continues (admirably summarized by Coatsworth in the catalogue). Coatsworth is on less contentious ground from the late eighth century onwards. For example, the links between York and some of the early minster sites that have produced sculpture are well set out and convincingly argued. Again the data could have been pressed further to make clearer that in the West Riding – and for that matter in the western part of the North Riding – we can see in some very high-quality sculptures a reflection of a Carolingian renaissance centred on York, with new kinds of monument, new sources for motifs, access to a classicizing artistic tradition and tighter integration between text and iconography, as at Otley and Dewsbury.

All of this is mere carping around the margins, however. Coatsworth has produced a fine catalogue with an analytical text, which is both well argued and well written. It is an impressive foundation to have laid. Roll on further volumes of the Corpus!