Weird English stone carvings

I have a camera with a zoom lens. It’s not the best, but it’s pretty good.

It allows you to brings things which you would not ordinarily see, much closer.

Today I was in the City of York. I wandered into a few churches as well as the famous Minster.

Pointing my camera towards the roof I took some shots of the tiny figures carved there many centuries ago. They’re all about 5 – 8 cm in height, and well out of range of normal human sight.

Some of them are profoundly weird! The ones shown below are the images which came out best with the lighting available, but I can assure you that there were many more, much weirder than this, which are too dark to post here.

I’m guessing that some of them have meaning. I’m also guessing that the stone masons also were just having fun, safe in the knowledge that once they were in situ, nobody would ever (until the advent of modern optics) be able to see them.

What’s also interesting is the level of detail within these churches. I don’t suppose that modern architects often put details in that will be expensive to make, and can never be seen.

That’s what you call piety?