Select a site alphabetically from the choices shown in the box below. Alternatively, browse sculptural examples using the Forward/Back buttons.
Chapters for this volume, along with copies of original in-text images, are available here.
Object type: Cross-shaft
Measurements: H. (width as set in wall) 109 cm (42.8 in); W. (height as set in wall) 43 > 35.5 cm (16.9 > 14 in); D. 20.5 cm (8.1 in)
Stone type: Very pale orange (10YR 8/2), oolitic limestone. Ooliths, most of which are broken across, vary from 0.3 to 0.6 mm diameter, but are mostly in the range 0.4 to 0.5 mm; they form about 60% of the stone. Scattered shell fragments up to 5 mm across form about 5% of the stone. Cleeve Cloud Member? Birdlip Limestone Formation, Lower Inferior Oolite, Jurassic.
Plate numbers in printed volume: Ills. 496-501; Figs. 25J-L
Corpus volume reference: Vol 10 p. 281-3
(There may be more views or larger images available for this item. Click on the thumbnail image to view.)
Recorded by the Royal Commission (R.C.H.M.(E.) 1932, 1, pl. 18). It was apparently Clapham who noticed this piece, as he wrote to Mr G. McNeil Rushforth, suggesting that it should be removed to a safer location (letter reported in (—), 1930–2, lxx).
A (broad): The shaft appears to be complete with a double border on all four sides of the surviving face. The inner border is plain, while the outer side borders and probably the top and bottom outer borders carry median-incised cable decoration. The carving consists of an inhabited plant-scroll, with simple, median-incised volutes in which stand two animals and a bird. The plant-scroll grows upwards from a small, hatched base similar to the horseshoe-shaped features on the Cropthorne cross-head (see discussion below). The curving stem widens towards each node, and the widened portions are filled with hatching. From the nodes grow rounded or tri-lobed fruit on straight stems, while from the upper node a trailing stem is taken back across the top of the panel to end in a downward-pointing hatched and lobed leaf. A pair of hatched leaves spring from the side of the stem near to the base, and the volutes end with hatched, lobed leaves or tri-lobed clusters of berries. The lobes on one of the leaves in the lowest volute have hollow centres.
Each of the three creatures is outlined with a narrow edge-moulding and has huge feet, and the two surviving eyes are drilled. Otherwise, however, each creature is treated in a different manner. The bird in the lowest volute has a plain body and head, realistic feathers on the wing and tail, and a broad almost parrot-like beak. The creature in the middle volute, probably a dog, has a short body filled with zones of small raised pellets separated by narrow, curving mouldings. This creature has long back legs, the thigh being filled with hatching, and the back feet have long, sharp claws. The front of the creature is missing, including the jaws, breast and front legs, but it has narrow, upright, pointed ears and a long curling tail. The topmost creature is probably also a dog, with hatching across the chest and a body covered with swags of fur. The back legs and tail of this creature are missing, but the front legs are quite short and the claws on the feet are not quite so pronounced as they are on the creature below. The head is plain and rounded as are the jaws, while from its open mouth protrudes the creature's long, curling tongue. The ears are upright and sharply pointed.
B (narrow), E (top) and F (bottom): Built in
C (broad): Part of this face (rebated for the top of the door) is visible on the inside of the doorway, but no ornament survives.
D (narrow): Built in at either end. The rest of the face has been cut away for the semi-circular head of the doorway.
The Acton Beauchamp cross-shaft is one of the early and influential ninth-century 'Cropthorne' group of carvings from western Mercia, which includes the Cropthorne cross-head itself in Worcestershire (p. 353, Ills. 621–33), and cross-shafts from Gloucester (Gloucester St Oswald 3, p. 209, Ills. 278–86) and Wroxeter in Shropshire (Wroxeter St Andrew 1–3, p. 314, Ills. 562–9). The Acton Beauchamp shaft has the usual mix of animals and birds with bodies treated naturalistically or with zonal decoration. Interestingly, as with the Wroxeter cross-shaft, the Acton Beauchamp shaft is carved from oolitic limestone from eastern Gloucestershire or Worcestershire, and it is, therefore, a geological interloper in this sandstone area (see Chapter IV, p. 40).
The hollow-centred lobes on the lower leaf at Acton Beauchamp (Ill. 501) are very similar to fruit on the Wroxeter shaft (Ills. 563–4) and to the terminal lobe on the crest of a creature (probably a griffin) from Cropthorne (Ill. 631). Tri-lobed fruits or leaves occur at Wroxeter and at Cropthorne (Ills. 563–4, 625, 633). This particular leaf- or fruit-form is also found on the late eighth- or early ninth-century narrow frieze from Breedon-on-the-Hill in Leicestershire (Jewell 1986, 96-7, pls. XLII, XLIII; Dales 2006, 40, ill. 22), while the eighth-century Barberini Gospels offer a manuscript parallel (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Barb. lat. 570, fols. 11v, 50v: Alexander 1978, 61–2, cat. 36, ills. 174, 176–8). As noted above, the plant-scroll itself grows from a small, hatched base very similar to the horseshoe-shaped objects which perform similar functions on the Cropthorne cross-head, and also at Wroxeter (Ills. 496, 563, 621). These objects have been compared to the domed clips which attach foliate ornament to the side frames on some West Saxon carvings (Plunkett 1984, i, 210; Cramp 2006, 51, 54). It is, however, possible that this hatched shape should be seen as a plant pot like those from which plant-scrolls grow on the opening folios of the Matthew and Mark gospels in the Barberini Gospels (see above).
The bird in the lowest volute at Acton Beauchamp (Ill. 501) is closely paralleled at Cropthorne (Ill. 629) and on one face of the Gloucester St Oswald 3 cross, although here the bird has more body feathers (Ill. 284). A manuscript parallel from the first half of the ninth century can be found in the eagle symbol of St John from The Book of Cerne (Cambridge, Univ. Lib. MS Ll.i.10, fol. 31v: Alexander 1978, 84-5, cat. 66, ill. 314; Brown 1996, 162–84, pl. IV; this volume Ill. 773). The zonal hatching on the two Acton Beauchamp animals is a feature of all of the carvings in the 'Cropthorne' group, but the pelleted infill on the middle creature (Ill. 500) is more unusual. The swags of fur on the body of the upper creature at Acton Beauchamp (Ill. 498) are very similar to those on the back of the Gloucester St Oswald 3 beast (Ill. 283) and one of the Wroxeter dogs (Wroxeter St Andrew 2, Ill. 565), while the curling tail on the animal in the middle volute at Acton Beauchamp is like the tightly curled tails of both of the Wroxeter dogs.
Although Cramp has suggested early ninth-century north Italian and Spanish carved stone parallels for the division of animal bodies into patterned blocks (Cramp 1977, 230), there are no early ninth-century parallels from the Anglo-Saxon corpus for the combined use in carved stone of hatched zonal infill together with the more naturalistic treatments of muscles, fur and feathers that is found on the 'Cropthorne' carvings. The skilful blending together of these potentially conflicting styles indicates that this group of carvers were not only drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources (manuscript art, certain aspects of contemporary stone carving, metalwork, and probably also ivory carvings) but that they were also able to hold these different ideas in creative tension to inspire their own carvings (see also the Discussion section of the entry for Cropthorne in the Worcestershire catalogue, p. 354, and the introductory chapters III and VI, pp. 25, 67).
There is interesting evidence for the early history of this site. In the late Anglo-Saxon period, Acton Beauchamp was variously claimed by the monks of Evesham, Pershore and Worcester, but it finished up in the hands of Urse d'Abetot, sherriff of Worcestershire and ancestor of the Beauchamp family (Thorn and Thorn 1982, no. 11,1 and note; Sawyer 1968, nos. 786, 1479; Williams 1997b, 393). It is doubtless due to the disputes over Acton Beauchamp that Evesham preserved the text of a charter dated 718 by which King Æthelbald of Mercia granted three hides of land to his thegn Buca 'so that it may be a perpetual habitation of the servants of God' (Sawyer 1968, no. 85); the Evesham archive contains many forgeries, but this charter has some claim to authenticity (Sims-Williams 1990, 150–1). Thus Acton Beauchamp seems to have been established as a small family monastery (Blair 2001, 5–7; see also comments in Chapter III above, p. 21).
At the time of its establishment, Acton Beauchamp would seem to have been in the diocese of Hereford and in the kingdom of the MagonsÆte; it was probably due to the interests in Acton Beauchamp of monastic houses in Worcestershire that at some stage in the eleventh century, Acton Beauchamp became part of the diocese of Worcester and of the county of Worcestershire (Sims-Williams 1990, 43). In 1897 Acton Beauchamp was transferred from Worcestershire to Herefordshire.
