We visited All Saints Church in Sutton Benger, Wiltshire, and took the opportunity to record three pieces of sculpture and two wood-carvings within the church. The sculptural items include the famed Green Man or “foliate head”.

The Sutton Benger Green Man / Foliate Head

The Sutton Benger Green Man (there are actually three others on the outside of the church, probably of Victorian date) is arguably the best of all foliate head sculpture in existence. The man is surrounded by heavy hawthorn foliage in which berries and birds are found. His face has an
air of melancholic acceptance of the hawthorn branches spewing from his mouth.

The sculpture posed a few problems in terms of the depth of under-cutting present in the foliage. This resulted in our model having a few holes which we extruded and capped in an acceptable manner using some of our custom software. Our resulting model was 0.5mm accurate and contained 1.5 million triangles.

The green man can be found around head height to your left as you enter the church.

Photograph of foliate head

3D scan of foliate head

“Joseph” and “Mary”

These two ornamental heads are located at the bases of an arch at the choir area of the church on opposite walls facing each other.

Photograph of “Joseph”

3D scan of “Joseph”

Photograph of “Mary”

3D scan of “Mary”

Each scan, taken in situ, took approximately 10 minutes resulting in a model of approximately 0.5mm accuracy and around 400,000 triangles.

Wooden Pew Carvings

Within the choir stalls there are two pews which have small heads carved on the ends of them. Each scan, taken in situ, took about 5 minutes resulting in 0.5mm accurate scans of both carvings.

3D render of a pew end

3D render of a pew end