stone coffins

[fairfax]

why do the carvings of Lords and Knights etc on stone coffin lids in churchs etc appear to have had their noses sliced off? Is this just a fault with the stone or is there some other reason?

[juliacornwal]

If you mean the life-size prone statues (rather than actual carvings into the lid) they've mostly lost their noses because noses are notoriously easy to knock off. They've often lost fingers as well. Remember if they're four or five hundred years old, as many of them are, they've been through some pretty troubled times over the years and that, plus general wear and tear, will damage the most vulnerable bits first.

[heathfield]

They had enemies, sometimes for generations, who took it out on them after they'd died.

[Octavius]

You are probably thinking of the Eyptian method of desecrating a tomb. The nose was often hacked away, or the face mutilated and the name removed from stone carvings so that the dead person wouldn�t be recognised in the afterlife.

I am not certain that the same applies for the tombs you refer, but there may be much merit in both answers above. Cut the nose off to spite the face etc.

[heathfield]

In Islam, it was an offence to reproduce the human figure in any form. That's why statues and paintings, including those in Egypt, were destroyed as the Moslem expansion took place throughout the Mediterranian area. (Not the reason in England, though).

[Janner2]

Oliver Cromwell's soldiers were notorious for desecrating everything that they could in churches in the mid seventeeth century. Statues and carvings were particularly prone to smashing and disfigurement in the interests of discouraging idolatry.

A few cases may be explained by the old Bernard Miles monologue, when he said that it weren't the roundheads - "that old crusader were the finest bit of sharpening stone in Hertfordshire."

[dot.hawkes]

It wasn't just the noses of statues the roundheads sliced off, they also did this to women who supported the Royalists.