Showing in south and east faces of pillar. See no. 1.

Raine (1852) records that about eighteen fragments of sculpture found by Mr. Gilly in 1833 in investigating foundations of building in churchyard a few paces from east end of present church. Fragments built up into pillar by time of note in (-) 1869-79c, and possibly before Stuart (1867), whose plates show only faces now visible [1]. Pillar originally in churchyard: Allen and Browne 1885, 351; (-) 1889-90d, 243; Tomlinson 1891, 551. Removed indoors c. 1891: (-) 1891-2b, 49-54; Hodges 1893, 85. Very few fragments described before Stuart.

St Cuthbert

Worn

Arm, type D9 or D11.

A (broad): This face, possibly the left horizontal arm, is surrounded by a fine double roll moulding and subdivided by a single roll moulding into two panels. (i) In the end panel is an animal seen in profile. Its head is bent slightly to eat a scroll. It has a rounded head with a small pointed ear and its jaws are slightly open. It has a sharply everted wing with curling tip. Its tongue is extended and passes through its prancing front legs to join with its tail. Both tongue and tail extensions pass under and over the back legs and haunches of the beast and curl around the wing. One strand ends with a curling tip. The back haunches are almost disassociated from the body. (ii) In the central panel is a knot of plant-scroll, of which the crossing strands end in small plain pointed leaves. The strands form one unit of turned half pattern F with surrounding outside strands.

F (narrow): Possibly the under-side. It has a panel of closed circuit pattern D with bar terminal, surrounded by a fine roll moulding.

The division of the cross-head into panels can be found at Hoddom, Dumfriesshire, and Masham, Yorkshire. The style of animal ornament and the knotted scrolls seem rather to have evolved from metalwork and manuscripts motifs such as the Re, Nord Trøndelag mount and the Leningrad Gospels, fol. 12v. The leaf-knot motif is found on the Wallingford sword and the Aethelwulf ring (Wilson 1964, 82, pls. 6, 19). The motif is also found on Norham 2.

Second quarter of ninth century

Stuart 1867, 20-1, pl. xxviii, 13; Adcock 1974, 191-2, pl. 69A-B; Cramp 1978a, 12, pl. 1, 5

1. Those faces which are cemented into the pillar cannot be described but some descriptions can be based on earlier illustrations