Stretching millennia, a boulder located near the entrance of Coventry Cathedral provides a touchstone for reflecting on deep time and geo-political tensions. Crystals and signs of marine life are embedded in the limestone of the boulder from the Cretaceous period, of at least 100 million years old.

Over lunch Basil Spence had mentioned, to his architect friend Frankland Dark, he was thinking of acquiring a stone for a font for Coventry Cathedral from Iona, the island off the west coast of Scotland. Dark thought he heard Ionia, in Southern Turkey, and then suggested Bethlehem would be an even more fitting site to for a boulder. The rock migrated in an iron cage with a boarding pass on 9th November 1960 from Beirut to Manchester, transported by what has been described by participants as “a saga of goodwill”. 

The installation moves along the journey of the boulder.

Availiable during Cathedral Opening Hours. 

A Mishearing: between a rock and a hard place has arisen from the interdisciplinary contact zones Professor Nirmal Puwar, from Goldsmiths University, initiated during her British Academy Innovation Fellowship (2023-25) on ‘Multicultural Experiments in the Civic Life of Coventry Cathedral’. A conversation on the boulder with Jasleen Kaur connects the Turner Prize winner’s installation, placed in the Delia Derbyshire Building of Coventry University, for British Art Show 10; located a 5-minute walk away from the cathedral.