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: Part of cross-shaft
Measurements: H./L. c. 130 cm (52 in); W. 45 cm (18 in), 78 > 56 cm (31.2 > 22.4 in) (visible face); D. 18 cm (7.2 in)
Stone type: Because of its position as a step threshold, the surface is rather smooth, worn and discoloured and the constituent minerals are not easy to discern. Coarse-grained granite with feldspar megacrysts up to 4 x 1 cm forming about 60% of the rock; quartz is fine grained with no obvious phenocrysts. Land's End Granite
Plate numbers in printed volume: Ills. 138-9
Corpus volume reference: Vol 11 p. 167-8
(There may be more views or larger images available for this item. Click on the thumbnail image to view.)
Only a small section of one broad face of this shaft is visible, the section which forms the tread of the tower step. The other broad face is completely buried and the two sides are covered in plaster or whitewash.
A (broad): Three registers of double-stranded simple pattern E (Stafford knot) are visible; pellets fill the spaces between the strands.
Probably a member of the Penwith group of pre-Norman sculpture (Chapter IX, p. 88). Since the head does not survive, it does not have the diagnostic features of Crucifixion on one side and five bosses on the other, but the use of double strands for the interlace and simple pattern E are also characteristic. The only other example in Cornwall of simple pattern E in registers is Sancreed 1 (Ill. 216), another member of the group. Outside Cornwall, simple pattern E in registers appears commonly in work centring on the tenth century, for example, Chester-le-Street 6A and C, Tynemouth 1D (Cramp 1984, 56, pls. 20.104, 21.108; 226, pl. 224.1262) and Workington 4D (Bailey and Cramp 1988, 156, ill. 596) and in south Wales at Penally (2), St Edrins (5) and Llandough (respectively Edwards 2007, 414–17, 481–2; Redknap and Lewis 2007, 329–37).
The surviving fragment is too small to enable close dating: the suggested date range is that for the Penwith group as a whole.
Ludgvan church has no place-name evidence of an early Christian origin and no Celtic dedication is known. The name, probably from Cornish lusow + -an, 'place of ashes' (Padel 1988, 112), refers to the manor, which in 1086 was a substantial estate held from the Count of Mortain by Richard, one of the principal subtenants in Cornwall (Thorn and Thorn 1979, 5,3,27). The church therefore seems likely to have originated as a manorial chapel and the cross, like Gwinear 1, may have commemorated an important secular figure associated with the manor.
