Monks' Dormitory, Durham cathedral, catalogue no. XLVI

Found in restoration of 1864, possibly in south wall of nave, which was taken down. Kept in Vicarage garden until 1896 when donated to chapter library, Durham

St Mary

Broken and reused

A (top): A plain dressed surface is enclosed by roll and cable mouldings, with widely spaced cable groupings.

B (long): Framed at the top by a bold roll moulding with widely spaced cabling is the upper part of an Old English inscription in Anglo-Saxon capitals:

 [A]L[RI]H[CSE]T[AE –

Translation: 'Alrihc set up . . .'

C (end): Broken.

D (long): A bold roll moulding at the top with traces of widely spaced cabling. Below, a narrow flat-band moulding and a roll moulding with continuous cabling, both probably secondary.

E (end): Roughly dressed.

F (bottom): A continuous cable moulding runs along one edge. The other edge has later been crudely rebated and the intervening surface roughly dressed back.

Inscriptions which run round the edges of objects are not unknown in other media in the Anglo-Saxon period (Okasha 1971, pls. 4, 140). However, it is very rare to find an inscription in stone on the vertical face of what seems to be a recumbent monument. Falstone 2 is only a remote parallel. The letters are fairly crudely tooled but are clearly part of the Anglian tradition of formulae. The name of the person who set up the cover is not incontrovertibly identifiable with any Old English form. The -rihc seems to be a variant of -ric, but the prefix could be reconstructed in several ways (Okasha 1971, 72). This could be one of the earliest pieces from the site, but its form and the lack of ornament make it possible that it is a very late piece of the eleventh century (like 23).

Mid ninth to mid eleventh century

Haverfield and Greenwell 1899, no. XLVI, 108-9, fig. on 108; Hodges 1905, 230; Cramp 1965a, 7, no. 46; Okasha 1971, 72, pl. 40

1. The following are general references to the Gainford stones: Greenwell 1880-9b, lxviii; Allen and Browne 1885, 352; (—) 1887-8b, 373. Brock 1888, 176, refers to stones in a graaden (later taken to Durham) and mentions illustrations by STuarts but does not describe them individually. (—) 1905-6b, 343-4, refers to discovery of stones in 1864-5 restoration, and there is also a reference to the finding in 1905 of another stone in the field west of the churchyard wall, and to the discovery of bones and a sword in the churchyard in 1889.