CORPUS OF ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
ANNUAL REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENT
Year ending 31 December 2023
| CONTENTS | PAGE |
|---|---|
| Ofcers and professional advisers | 2 |
| Principal actvites and responsibilites of trustees | 3 |
| Management Board Report | 4 |
| Income and expenditure | 6 |
| Balance sheet | 7 |
CORPUS OF ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
TRUSTEES AND PROFESSIONAL ADVISERS
Trustees Nicola Coldstream, MA, PhD, FSA Katherine Davey, MA, MA Catherine English, BA, MA, FSA Jill Franklin, PhD, FSA* Professor Eric Fernie, CBE, FBA, FRSE, Hon VPSA, FSA (Scot), Hon DLitt James King, BA, MA, FSA Professor Neil Stratford, BA, MA, FSA Charity Secretary Simon Kirsop, BA, MA, FSA Charity Treasurer Susan Nettle, MSc, MA Contact Address 122 Woburn Drive Hale WA15 8NF Bankers Barclays PLC Hounslow, Middlesex Independent Auditors Gary Dolphin GHD Finance Ltd 8 Huxtable Rise Worcester WR4 0NX
- Dr Jill Franklin died on 27[th] October 2023.
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CORPUS OF ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
PRINCIPAL ACTIVITIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE TRUSTEES
The Trustees are responsible for ensuring that the principal activities of the Corpus are undertaken, namely, to create and maintain a publicly available record of Romanesque sculpture in Great Britain and Ireland between c1050 and c1200 through the establishment, maintenance and promotion of a permanent record and archive of such sculpture (www.crsbi.ac.uk); to advance the public knowledge of all such sculpture through engagement and education; and to assist in the preservation of such sculpture for the public benefit in such ways as the Trustees shall from time to time determine.
The Trustees are also responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charity (Registered Charity No. 1168535). In addition, the Trustees are responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charity hence for taking reasonable steps for ensuring the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.
The Trustees met in person on 30 October.
The Trustees are assisted in undertaking their responsibilities by the Management Board.
The Trustees wish to show their appreciation for the work that Dr Jill Franklin undertook while a Trustee of the Corpus.
RESULTS
The financial results for the period 1 January – 31 December 2023 and the Charity’s financial position at the end of the year are shown in the attached financial statement.
Susan Nettle
Treasurer
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CORPUS OF ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
MANAGEMENT BOARD REPORT
Year end 31 December 2023
The members of the Management Board have pleasure in presenting their report and the financial statement of the Corpus for the year ended 31 December 2023.
The Management Board met via Zoom on 20 October.
Dr Xavier Dectot resigned as Chair of the Management Committee during February 2023 and Dr John Munns, Associate Professor of History and Art History at Magdalene College, Cambridge was appointed to succeed him in December 2023.
1. Financial matters
The single largest expenditure during the year was the one-off hosting fee for the digital asset management system hosted by iBase; this will remain an ongoing cost into the future.
The British Academy continued with its support of the on-going work of the Corpus. We benefitted from £5,000 given by the British Academy.
We thank all our supporters and donors, past and present, who have enabled and sustained the aims and development of the Corpus over the years and pledged to support us into the future.
2. Development of the Romanesque dataset during 2023
The database is now fully operational and available on-line to external visitors with new features and much enhanced searchability.
By the end of 2023, 3,229 were online and work was nearing completion of a further 800 sites. Support from our donors in 2023 enabled volunteers to visit some of the more distant sites. Of note, Lincolnshire, the third highest-ranked county by number of Romanesque sites in England, now has 139 sites listed on the database. Derbyshire, with 95 sites, is now virtually complete and includes the important churches of Steetley and Melbourne. County Durham, by comparison, has just one site added in the past year, Durham Castle Chapel.
In April an iBase training session was held at the Courtauld Institute and provided instruction and support for five volunteers and editors.
3. Public engagement
CRSBI was delighted to be able to assist in a recent English Heritage project at Bury St Edmunds, in the course of which the Research Director was able to add new material to the website from sites not easily accessible. Suffolk Archaeology was also involved, and a blog about our work at Bury was published on their website at https://heritagesuffolk.wordpress.com/2022/03/25/romanesque-buryabbey/
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CORPUS OF ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
In addition, Steven Brindle gave a fascinating lecture on the project for the Royal Archaeological Institute and the British Archaeological Association, during which he generously acknowledged our contribution. This can be seen at htps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWmJIixMb3Q
The CRSBI Newsletter was published online twice during 2023 in addition to the regular Twitter feed which aims to drive traffic to the site via link click-throughs; highlight useful site functionalities; and generally raise awareness of and engagement with the project/site itself. Some 1,890 followers are now aware of updates to the Corpus site.
On 24 April 2023 the CRSBI Annual lecture was held at the Courtauld Institute in front of a live audience, Dr Richard Plant, spoke on the subject of ‘Reflections on the Cushion Capital’. To date, the lecture has been accessed over 250 times on-line.
During the year several publications or articles appeared written or edited by members of the Corpus community. These included:
Ron Baxter, 'Changing the Face of Romanesque Sculpture: Prior and Gardner and the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland', in P.Lindley and M. Hale (ed.), Nationalism, medievalism and the study of sculpture: Prior and Gardner's 'Account' reassessed, (Donington 2023), 40-44.
Malcolm Thurlby, ‘The Romanesque Abbey Church of Malmsbury: Patronage and Date’, Wilts Art and Nat Hist, vol 112, 121-155.
In addition, the Corpus was thanked by the editors in the book ‘900 years of St Bartholomew the Great’ for permission to use photographs. Publication of which coincided with a 1-day conference at St Bartholomew’s during which Dr Jill Franklin gave a paper and also spoke inside the Priory Church.
4. The Future
We welcome Dr John Munns into his new role of Chair of the Management Board and very much look forward to working with him, to secure funding to support the future of CRSBI.
The priorities for 2024 remain recruiting new volunteer fieldworkers, especially in areas where there is a dearth of site coverage; current fieldworkers are having to travel greater distances to access these sites. All fieldworkers will continue to be offered enhanced data-entry training enabling them to upload new site reports for consideration by the editorial team. With the introduction of a more intuitive search facility on the website, it is hoped students, researchers, academics, and visitors, will find the site helpful when searching for items of Romanesque sculpture.
It has become apparent that the present online configuration of the Corpus database on iBase is not suitable for mobile phone users, and it is hoped that during 2024 an upgrade to the system can be made to create a more user-friendly format for current sites.
We continue to seek support from current and new donors to support the ongoing work of the Corpus as we move towards the initial completion of the dataset.
Finally, we wish to thank all our donors, most especially the British Academy, and together with our volunteers for their continuing support.
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CORPUS OF ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT
1st January 2023 to year end 31st December 2023
| INCOME | 2023 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| £ | £ | |
| Donatons restricted | 0 | 0 |
| Donatons unrestricted | 5,000 | 10,900 |
| EXPENDITURE | ||
| Editng | (541) | (2,446) |
| Fieldworking | (1,438) | (1,935) |
| Wales | (0) | (0) |
| Travel to meetngs | (117) | (89) |
| Annual Donor Dinner | (177) | (257) |
| Events Coordinator | (0) | (0) |
| Web-Editor | (300) | (675) |
| Website Hostng fee | (4,536) | (4,320) |
| Website Development fee | (0) | (0) |
| IMC Leeds | (0) | (1,137) |
| Publicity | (890) | (269) |
| Training event | (320) | (664) |
| Sundries | (0) | (0) |
| Fund balance brought forward at | 16,871 | 17,764 |
| 1stJanuary 2023 | ||
| Fund balance carried forward at | 13,544 | 16,871 |
| 31stDecember 2023 |
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CORPUS OF ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
BALANCE SHEET
31st December 2023
| 2023 | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|
| £ | £ | |
| Bank account | 13,544 | 16,871 |
| Represented by: | ||
| Reserves | 13,544 | 16,871 |
These financial statements were approved by the Trustees on the 6[th] March 2024 and signed on their behalf by:
Chair
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