Shouldering the burden

The human figure supporting a structural load–the female caryatid or male atlas–is a long-running theme in British architecture. John Goodall examines this playful idea

-  John Goodall

These terracotta caryatids were made in 1819 by John Rossi for architects William Inwood and his son, Henry, for St Pancras, Euston, London N1, the most expensive church built in the capital since St Paul’s. They are modelled on the figures that supported the Erechtheum on the Acropolis of Athens, one of which was put on display in the British Museum in 1817. Each figure holds a funerary jar and an inverted torch

A man roars in discomfiture at the burden of the chancel arch that he notionally shoulders in the parish church of Coombes, West Sussex. This fresco was painted in about 1100 and was uncovered as part of a wider scheme in 1949–52. The depiction of the man’s face is strikingly cartoon-like

Lady Ursula and Lady Isabel Manners pose as caryatids by the Long Gallery fireplace at Haddon Hall, Derbyshire. It’s one of a series of photographs taken of the two sisters in 1933, following the installation of Rex Whistler’s painting of the building, above their heads

A detail of the 1760 saloon fireplace by Lightfoot at Claydon House, Buckinghamshire. It tells the story of the invention of the Corinthian Order as related by Roman architect Vitruvius. Here, the sculptor Callimachus, with his dividers and a broken column, spots a memorial entwined in acanthus to a maid

This corbel of about 1300 in Wells Cathedral, Somerset, shows a man thrusting the foot of a crutch into the mouth of a monster as he nonchalantly supports the spring of the vault with one hand. From the 1390s, it became common to rest roofs on the backs of angels