Remounted slightly above chancel floor level on purpose-made stone blocks and placed centrally to the north of the main processional routeway, but with plenty of room to inspect all sides.

The monument was conserved and moved to its present location in 1999. Prior to that it had been mounted upright against the east wall of the south aisle and held in place with cement (Ill. 35). The monument's respectful upright position had already been achieved by the time that Godfrey wrote (1907, 229) or Barratt visited in 1909 (Nottinghamshire Archives Office, DD/TS/14/32/3, p. 23), and indeed already by September 1889, when a pencil field drawing was produced only partially recording the top's decoration but with a side elevation and sections at the head and foot, all with dimensions noted, and was annotated 'fixed upright against E wall of S aisle of Nave' (BL, Add. MS 37552, f. 190; see Ill. 180). The cover had evidently lain on the floor of the chancel for a considerable period of time previously, which was where it was seen by Stretton in 1821 (Robertson 1910, 80, and figure). In that year Stretton also reported that it had been 'dug up in the church yard many years since in making a grave', so we might imagine its recovery in the late eighteenth or in the early years of the nineteenth century. Irvine's later nineteenth-century account of the discovery, which is full of circumstantial detail, appears to contradict this in respect both of date and location (Irvine 1890). 'This stone, according to the testimony of an eye-witness now living in Hickling, was dug up from below the chancel of the present church on the occasion of the interment of the widow of a Rector in the year 1826. From that time it lay on the floor of the church, and was found by the present Rector, Canon Skelton, at his coming, in a heap of coal. On the occasion of the restoration of the church in 1886, for its better preservation, it was erected in the east wall of the south aisle'. Irvine attempts, apparently deliberately, to reconcile this with Stretton's report by suggesting that the early burial was probably originally outside, but became engulfed within the church's footprint as its chancel was enlarged; but the dates of the cover's reported discovery cannot be reconciled.

The drawing of the stone which is frequently reproduced (for example in Hill 1916a, fig. 5) was in the possession of the then rector, F. J. Ashmall, around 1900, when Godfrey borrowed it for his 1907 publication (Godfrey 1907, 230). It has not been clear until now whose work it represents. Unpublished inked drawings of the top and two long sides in the Romilly Allen collection do not portray the peculiar jagged cross arm, and so seem to be independently produced, perhaps based on the pencil drawings in the same deposit noted above (BL, Add. MS 37552, ff. 187–9). But, as Irvine notes (1890, 71), the Rev. G. F. Browne had secured a rubbing, and he produced simplified line drawings of the top and both long sides as illustrations handed out in support of his first series of Disney Lectures at Cambridge in February and March 1889, when Hickling was the second monument illustrated and discussed (Browne 1889–93, illustrations of Lectures I and II, 2, 3, 4, consulted as National Library of Wales, MS 6597E). These are the drawings everyone since has reproduced (see Ills. 32–4).

St Luke

Quite good. The stone has been broken into two parts at a point about two-thirds of the way along its length. Although the two sides of this break might touch within the thickness of the stone, at the surface a small strip of the original decoration has been lost on the 'lid', and somewhat more on both side panels. However, the missing sections have been carefully restored. At the 'foot' end of the monument considerable damage was evidently done either by chemical action whilst the monument was cemented into the south aisle floor or by mechanical action during its extraction in 1999. A strip of the original carved surface at this end has been lost. The decorated surfaces of the stone are all slightly weathered.

Hickling 1 is a large grave-cover of unique form nationally, in that it combines the Anglo-Norse 'hogback' of the north country, with the large coped grave-cover form that is more typical of the East Midlands. The stone itself is (or was) a single block, tapering from head to foot, and with a pronounced coped section. In profile the monument is also bowed ('hog-backed') with a slight rise in thickness from the head towards the centre of the stone and a more marked tailing-off in thickness towards the 'foot' end. The arrises are marked with bold fillets of rectangular section, but all are unornamented. Between faces F (bottom) and B, and faces F and D, these fillets are broader than those between these side panels and the lid (face A), which off-sets the decoration within the side panels, and would originally have lifted the decoration off the ground when the stone was in situ.

A (top): The coped upper surface of the Hickling grave-cover is carved with unusual decoration cut in deep low-relief. The decoration is organized in rectangular panels to either side of the central ridge, which itself is a relatively undecorated flat fillet. Towards the head end the fillet becomes the stem of a fine cross with straight expanding arms (Corpus type B6), with a slightly rounded terminal to the lower arm only. The arms themselves are outlined with a secondary incised line. The upper edge of the cross-arm to the left (as viewed from the foot of the monument) has an inexplicable, though quite purposeful, serrated profile (Ills. 32, 35, 46). Below the cross-head itself, and marking the mid point of the stone, is a bold transverse bar that extends across the ridge on both sides of the 'lid'. This broad feature is decorated with a row of small circular beads in low relief and it divides the interlace and animal decoration on the lid into two distinct parts: the four panels decorating the interstices between the cross-arms, from those that flank the lower parts of the ridge fillet.

The four panels within the cross-arms are of unequal sizes; the two above the left and right arms are larger than the pair below. All are decorated with different combinations of details, yet they all follow similar patterns of layout, lending some sort of balance to the irregular composition. Three of the panels (the two upper ones and the lower left, when viewed from the foot end) incorporate similar rather schematic quadrupeds (Ills. 35, 45–6, 49). Each has a square dog- or dragon-like head, with a gaping jaw and a domed skull. Their rather rectangular bodies are delicately enhanced with a lightly incised contour line. The lower jaw of one (the upper left, Ill. 45) abuts a pronounced, sub-circular pellet — perhaps a lower lip-lappet (as suggested by its inaccurate depiction in the much published drawing, Ill. 32) — jammed between the cross-arm and an interlace strand. Another has a large, ovoid eye indicated with a lightly-inscribed line (Ill. 49); and there seem to be degraded eyes on the other two also (Ills. 45–6). All three quadrupeds are entangled in interlacing strands of a pronounced 'U' section, with traces here and there of a faint medial line. The two animals to the left of the cross have a strand emerging from their own tails, whereas their fellow to the right, whilst just as thoroughly entangled within interlace, is entirely unattached to it, and thus has its own stumpy rounded tail. In all three cases the interlace is no more than a single strand, which winds in and around itself, and turns sharply back on itself or has a free end where necessary. The loops themselves are mostly sharply pointed, in the manner of variations on the triquetra.

The fourth interstice omits the quadruped entirely (Ill. 50), leaving only an enlarged version of a similar form of simple interlace knot, consisting of a pair of linked triquetras, with clearly incised medial line. This is disposed within the available space in a way that might be thought to imitate the animal forms alongside it, as if the animal ornament had become an entirely abstract ornament formed from the knot itself. However, in contrast to the animal in the corresponding panel, this motif fails to fill the panel, which in consequence also has a group of four domed circular bosses, arranged in a zig-zag line, filling in the large residual space between the knot and the frame. The two panels on the left-hand side also use similar bosses in the same way, but fewer of them and randomly disposed.

Below the beaded cross-bar, the decorated panels occupying the lower half of the stone towards the foot of the cover are of different sizes and there is little symmetry on either side of the coped ridge. The panel to the left of the ridge (when viewed from the foot of the monument) is divided into three fields of very uneven size by slender fillets of rectangular section. That to the right is divided into only two fields, also of unequal size, by a similar fillet that is off-set from both of those on the opposite side of the ridge. The uppermost panel to the left of the ridge (Ill. 47) is filled with a poorly laid-out and executed but symmetrically disposed interlace knot, comprising two loops, two box points and two loose ends (compare Cramp 1991, fig. 23, half-pattern F top). This is formed from a single strand, decorated with a bold incised medial line. It terminates at its upper extent in a loose end which has been formed into a snake- or bird-like head, with a pecked dint forming a pronounced 'eye'. The knot is stretched and the central void thereby created is filled with a triplet of round bosses forming a trefoil-shaped motif. The knot's lower loop has been damaged when the stone itself was broken into two (see above).

'Below' this panel, and still to the 'left' of the ridge, is a small rectangular panel (Ill. 48 left), set transversely and filled with a single unit of four-strand plait disposed in a familiar motif (Everson and Stocker 1999, fig. 10, no. vi). This is notably misshapen and crammed into the restricted space. The strands are decorated with an incised medial line here also, and one loose end only terminates in a similar snake- or bird-head to the one above it, with a minimal mouth but no 'eye'. The third panel on this side of the ridge (Ill. 48 right) lies closest to the foot end of the monument, but contains no interlace at all. Instead, it is completely occupied by a pair of affronted quadrupeds who belong to the same genus as those wreathed in interlace surrounding the cross-head above. Of all the beasts on the Hickling cover, these probably survive in the best condition, and show that some attempt was made to indicate incised 'spiral' shoulder joints, as well as bulging circular eyes. Their square snouts, too, probably once had carefully delineated nostrils. Like their fellows, their squarish bodies are outlined with an incised line. These two quadrupeds turn their heads backwards over their bodies and open their mouths as though to bite their tails. The tail of the uppermost beast has a bold club-shaped terminal, although that belonging to its companion has been damaged. Between the heads of the two beasts is another circular boss.

To the right of the ridge-rib and below the cross-bar (as viewed from the monument's foot), the two panels are disposed very differently. The uppermost, occupying about one third of the available space, contains yet another of the Hickling quadrupeds (Ill. 51). This example is also quite well preserved, with its body also outlined with an incised line and with spiral shoulder and hip joints just visible. Its squarish head contains a large ovoid eye and a gaping mouth, and it has a short stumpy 'tail'. Like its fellows surrounding the cross-head above, this animal is tangled in an interlace knot of triqetra type, whose strand is enhanced with an incised medial line. The strand has no free-end and is wound around the beast in the same pattern as that around the beast occupying the space to the lower left of the cross-arm. Another circular boss fills a space between its foreleg and the frame. The final Hickling quadruped occupies the upper part of the panel beneath (Ill. 52), though its hind quarters have been seriously damaged when the stone was broken into two. Like the others, its body is outlined with an incised line and it too has a squarish head with a bold circular eye and gaping jaw and a relatively long upper lip, though without a lappet. It is also entangled in interlace, which is similarly enhanced with an incised line. Its disposition cannot now be confirmed but it was probably laid out in the same, or a similar, pattern as that around the beast above it. The remaining part of this panel, between the quadruped and the foot of the stone, by contrast, is filled up with a simple pattern comprising two large 'free rings', with two free strands looping through them. Both rings and strands are enhanced with an incised medial line.

At either end of the Hickling monument are two further zoomorphs (Ills. 35, 38–41). These are quite clearly intended to represent the head and shoulders of a pair of bears, who clasp the 'eaves' of the lid with their large square fore-paws (each with three 'fingers' or claws) and from whose mouths the central ridge-rib itself emerges. Although they are not carved fully in the round, they both stand proud of the sculpture on the lid, and provide a pronounced terminal to the stone at either end. Unfortunately, the bear at the foot end has suffered badly from having been set within the south aisle floor, but the bold muzzle band is still quite clear. Its ears, shown as clearly delineated in the drawing produced by G. F. Browne (Ill. 32), are no longer recognizable today, however. The bear at the head end survives in much better condition and not only can the muzzle strap be seen much more clearly, where it passes over the bear's head, but the animal's eyes can also be made out. The shoulders, too, are delineated with an incised line, and a pattern of regular striations might even represent the final vestiges of an attempt to depict fur.

B (long): Within the panel defined by the plain rectangular fillets, the field is decorated with a continuous run of interlace in low relief, enlivened with an incised medial line (Ills. 33, 43–4). The interlace is slightly domed in profile and contrasts markedly with the technique used in most other monuments in the county (e.g. within the Ancaster products such as the mid-Kesteven grave-covers). The interlace itself is formed from a single continuous strand that emerges from the frame of the panel at the head end and then develops in a series of 'slipped knots' (Corpus pattern A) along the face of the panel, turning back on itself at the foot end to complete the pattern by inserting further 'slipped knots' in the gaps deliberately left for it on its outwards journey. Small domed bosses fill the gaps between the third and fourth knots (a pair of them), the fourth and fifth knots, the fifth and sixth knots, the sixth and seventh knots and the eighth and ninth knots.

C (end): Undecorated. The surface is weathered. This end retains a substantial cramp or staple hole (Ills. 36, 38–9). The staple-hole is 'L-shaped' in profile and bears a great similarity to those described as 'bar-cramp' holes which were used to receive iron staples that held stone components together in major Roman buildings (Blagg 2002, 179). If it is one half of a bar-cramp or staple-hole, as seems very likely, then it will have originally held a forged iron staple held within a plug of lead. No trace of either survives.

D (long): Within the panel defined by rectangular fillets, the field is decorated with interlace that is both well set-out and cut with a slightly 'domed' profile, as seen on face B. It, too, is enlivened with an incised medial line. The design, however, differs from that on face B. Here the pattern is based on a series of free rings, through which a two-strand twist forms a continuous criss-crossing loop (Ills. 34, 42). The rings are spaced out, leaving substantial fields between them and emphasizing their bold relief. There are no free-ends, as the two potentially free strands at either end of the run are joined together as bar terminals to create a continuous twist.

E (end): Undecorated (Ill. 37). The surface is weathered.

F (bottom): Not visible; but it appears, by touch, to be the original surface of the base of the grave-cover.

The striking grave-cover at Hickling is perhaps the best-known early monument in Nottinghamshire. It is also one of the most problematic, both in terms of its stylistic references and in its cultural and historical context. On close inspection it is a complex stone.

First, its stone type is — contrary to previous assessments — a palish grey-yellow Millstone Grit. Though more commonly encountered in use for later pre-Conquest stone sculpture and stone buildings in the East Midlands in a red or dark red colouration, as is the case in Nottinghamshire of Southwell 2 (p. 185), the paler varieties in shades of grey, yellow and green were available and exploited from the same quarry outcrops near Knaresborough as the reds (Senior 1991, 11–13, and see the 'stone type' entries of individual York stones in Lang 1991 for the range of colours). With the red examples, they were typically reused from Roman primary contexts, whether local or more distant, rather than newly quarried. Many were re-distributed via the waterway networks of the Trent and Humber (Everson and Stocker 1999, 12, 28, 69, 81; Stocker and Everson 2006, 18; Rodwell with Atkins 2011, 320–7).

Critically, Hickling 1 actually retains within it direct evidence that this stone was not quarried for initial use as a funerary monument. The staple hole in the 'head end' (face C) is of a well-recognized form and must relate to a primary use of the stone as an architectural feature, and not as a grave-cover (Ills. 36, 38–9). Exactly what architectural purpose the original stone might have served is not certain, but the form of the staple strongly suggests that face F is a surface left over from this use, which has subsequently become the base of the grave-cover. The stone has a very even-grained texture and an attractive grey to yellowish colour. It is possible that it once formed an attached half-column, or respond, against an ashlar wall in the manner shown in Fig. 19. As this figure indicates, a half-column of this type would need only minimal dressing to convert it into a grave-cover of the shape of Hickling 1. The form of the staple-hole points to a Roman architectural context, as does the whole concept of such attached shafts held against walls. But there must be some question about where the impressive Roman building from which it came might have been located. The scale and quality of the Roman building represented is more likely to have been a public or civic structure: for example, recent excavations at Chester amphitheatre have demonstrated that its external façade was articulated with just such monumental semi-circular attached shafts, deliberately evoking — as it is proposed — the Coliseum in Rome itself (Wilmott et al. 2006, 11–13). The nearest such structures might have been at Leicester (Ratae) 16 miles (26 km) away and directly linked with Hickling along the Fosse Way, which runs along the north-western boundary of the parish. Diana Sutherland has noted an arkosic (feldspar-bearing) variety of Carboniferous Millstone Grit, sourced from Melbourne in Derbyshire and found among the building stones of Roman Leicester, as forming a component in the re-cycled stone assemblage that she has studied in Brixworth church, and which she proposes was brought from there (Sutherland and Parsons 1984, especially 51). If the stone type was in common use there, Leicester by road is perhaps as likely a source as the derelict structures of Roman York, via water carriage on the Trent, where the stone type was certainly prolifically used and available in quantity. The formal and decorative analogies with the cover from Narborough and the shaft from Desborough noted below — one from just to the south west of that city, the other south east — might also seem to favour Leicester as the source.

Its origin as a choice item of re-cycled spolia gave Hickling 1 an important inherent Roman resonance, as well as the proportions and capacity for ready reshaping as a coped grave-cover. In reuse, its shaping and decoration added diverse early medieval cultural references, and these are also far-flung. Like the traditional assessments of Shelford 1 (p. 152), views on its date may differ by as much as a century, such divergence resulting from the varied emphasis placed on different aspects of the monument; though no modern assessment offers a date as late as J. T. Irvine's opinion that Hickling 1 'retains a last echo of ... the so-called "hog-back" type of monument' and dates from 1090–1100 (Irvine 1890, 72).

One line of thinking highlights the Hickling cover's coped form and decoration organized around a long-shafted cross. Though it might formally be reckoned a monument of 'hogback' type (Lang 1984, 88, 140), yet within that classification it is a one-off, or at best represents a tiny sub-class of the monument type. In comparison to the great bulk of such monuments it is a much broader, flatter and longer monument than the most typical members of the type, which come mostly from northern parts of Yorkshire and Cumbria and are sometimes called the 'Brompton type' (Bailey 1980, 85). Hickling's 'roof' is of much flatter pitch than these stereotypical examples, and closer to a routine coped cover. But it is a coped cover designed to stand up as a chest-like monument on the ground surface, with decorated panels along the sides. Then, too, if one excludes the members of the 'Trent Valley' group (see Chapter V above) it is the only example in the entire hogback corpus published by Lang which incorporates a cross within the layout of design on its roof. Indeed, crosses of any sort are rarely found on the monument type at all; examples at Dewsbury and Gosforth occur only on the gable-ends (Lang 1984, 130, 136). Furthermore, the cross at Hickling is of a splayed-arm form, Corpus type B6 (Cramp 1991, fig. 2). With some variations, this is a cross form which in the sculptural repertoire of the East Midlands is most commonly found as decoration of the latest pre-Conquest monuments, such as Carlby 2–4, Castle Bytham 1, Langton by Wragby 1 and 2, Lincoln St Mark 14 and 20, Marton 5 (all Lincolnshire — Everson and Stocker 1999, ills. 84–7, 88, 228–9, 252, 300, 411). The cross form continues in the Romanesque repertoire for minor sculpture, as on the tympanum at Byton, Herefordshire (Zarnecki 1951, fig. 16). All these, however, lack decoration surrounding the cross and filling the remainder of the carved upper surface. The well-established East Midlands tradition of covers that do so — in products from Ancaster, Lincoln and South Lincolnshire quarry sources (Everson and Stocker 1999, 35–58) — is standardly based on rectangular crosses, but does not deploy animal forms.

It is this combination of coped cover and longstemmed or processional cross with B6 head form that causes Hickling to be cited as an analogy — albeit a rare pre-Conquest one — for a monument such as the coped, chest-like cover with a long-stemmed cross from Newcastle, Glamorgan (Redknap and Lewis 2007, 488–91, figs. G114a–b). There, the cross and stem are cabled and the surrounding fields principally contain extended inscriptions, plus two return patterns in the form of a square with loops at the corners; one edge is decorated with continuous arcading: the whole is reckoned eleventh or early twelfth century in date. The eleventh-century cover from Cross Canonby, Cumberland, also cited as a pre-Conquest comparandum for Newcastle 2, is not actually coped nor has it a chest-like form with decoration on the sides, though it does have an axial long-stemmed cross (Bailey and Cramp 1988, 89, no. 4, ills. 222–3), while Cornish coped and chest-like examples are hipped, though the example from Lanivet does incorporate paired ridge-end bears into its design (Langdon 1896, 412–19; Preston-Jones and Okasha 2013, 163–4, ills. 124–30). Hickling 1 is clearly a chest-like monument, with decorated sides and designed to stand proud, and sits within a much longer and better-defined tradition in the East Midlands. Hogbacks and mid-Kesteven covers (p. 53) are pre-Conquest examples of the form; but the tradition continued into the post-Conquest era in the north-east Midlands, as Stocker long ago demonstrated in connexion with examples from Lincoln, Conisbrough and Staunton-in-the-Vale (Stocker 1988; Appendix G below, p. 237), where the decoration of the sides is typically a single motif — a run of interlinked circles or whatever — in contrast to the rich complexity of motifs and figure scenes found on the earlier monuments.

These comparisons might point us towards a latish pre-Conquest date for Hickling 1. Considerations that might be adduced to support this argument include its undoubtedly rather irregular layout, with panels of varying sizes and little symmetry in its decorative organization. Its decoration seems an eclectic combination drawn from several sources. In place of the 'wheel rims' marking the terminals of the 'Trent Valley' group of hogbacks (Everson and Stocker 1999, 35–6; this volume, pp. 51–3), Hickling reverts to the motif of bears in high relief, which is such a feature of the more classic hogback forms. Its animal quadrupeds, enmeshed in interlace, are of a common tenth-century pattern, which is well exemplified by, for example, an upright marker from Chester (Bailey 2010, 71–3, ill. 127) or more especially and more closely on the shaft at Desborough, Northamptonshire, and the cover from Narborough, Leicestershire (see below). Essentially similar quadrupeds, with gaping mouths, prominent eyes and stumpy or long tails, occur in the borders of the Bayeux Tapestry (Stenton 1957), often affronted in the heraldic manner of the lowest panel of the left-hand run at Hickling (Ill. 48). The beast enmeshed in interlace was still being produced, albeit with a stylish Romanesque spin and Urnes flavour, in local monumental sculpture at the beginning of the twelfth century, as at Southwell and Hoveringham (Appendix G, pp. 226, 231), and also at Birstall north of Leicester, where — since the decoration goes round the surviving corner — the monument may have been a major tomb chest (Dare 1930; Parsons 1996, 17).

The trick seen at Hickling of ornamenting loose ends of interlace with snake- or birds' heads terminals imitates the strands on the 'Trent Valley' monument from St Alkmund's Derby (Radford 1976, pl. 10a; Lang 1984, 129), but it also echoes northern practice generally, as at Beckermet St John (Bailey 1980, fig. 63b). The small transverse panel is a straight lift from the decorative range of transverse panels on mid-Kesteven covers of the mid tenth to early eleventh century; it is pattern no. vi from that series (Everson and Stocker 1999, 42, fig. 10), and Hickling sits on the south-west fringe of that monument type's distribution in the Trent valley (ibid., fig. 12; this volume, p. 60, Fig. 9). Other interlaces on Hickling 1, with the standard medial line, draw on the wider decorative repertoire of those same monuments; only it noticeably features free rings, which — like triquetra knots — afford maximum ease and flexibility for filling spaces. In fact there is only a limited amount of real interlace with any complexity of form deployed here, in contrast to knots and return loops of various sorts. The main exception is on the long side, face B, which carries a standard, asymmetric Viking-age pattern (see Bailey 1980, 220–2), deftly done. What is noticeable, however, is that on the opposite long side, face D, a very similar effect is produced by the much simpler expedient of deploying a series of free rings and running a simple two-strand twist through them in such a way as to place the rings over the crossings of the twist. This, too, is a standard Viking-age pattern, the 'ring-twist' (ibid., 7, 221; Cramp 1991, xxxii, fig. 26 Civ); but in both cases the spaces between the knots are extended or 'slipped', making it easier to fit the design to the space, and on face B irregularities in this spacing are filled out with pellets. Use of pellets as fillers is often taken, as at Merthyr Mawr, Glamorgan in the eleventh century, to be 'filling the inadequacies of the design' (Redknap and Lewis 2007, 460).

In fact, in most of the Hickling panels the sculptor distinctively declines to make the pattern, whether animal-based or simple knot, fill out the available space, and deploys fillers in the form of pellets or discs in various configurations. An unease with simple interlace is especially noticeable in the execution of the small transverse panel and the one above it in the left-hand run (Ills. 47–8). The stand-out anomaly of the decoration, however, is the 'inexplicable' oddity of the serrated upper edge of the left arm of the cross (Ills. 32, 35, 46). This 'profile' is in fact made up of rounded forms, both in respect of the interstices and of the extant knobs. It looks as though either a process of removal of surface stone to form the outline of the splayed cross was abandoned uncompleted, or an intention to create a row of small space-filling pellets to compensate for problems in the layout of the upper left-hand panel has been abandoned, half-finished, because it has not worked out and would impinge too much on the cross-arm. The innermost interstice does in fact drill too deeply into the armpit of the cross. But the purpose here may actually be less pragmatic (see below, in comparison with the Desborough shaft).

The difficulty of this line of analysis is to place this odd combination of features in an intelligible late context; in the early eleventh rather than the tenth century. A monument of clear ambition, Hickling's most distinctive aspect is its eclecticism. In juxtaposing bear terminals from the Scandinavianized north of England with a principal decorative element that is a long-stemmed, splay-armed cross, it demonstrates a syncretism of Christian with pagan Scandinavian symbolism (see below). This type of syncretism is usually thought to be a feature of the first half of the tenth century. However, it is also possible that such syncretism might reflect the renewed age of Danish land acquisition and estate formation that occurred in the early to mid eleventh century, the age of the Scandinavian kings of England, Cnut and his successors. Then, 'the chaos of the times' (as Roffe 2011, 44 has vividly characterized it) provided a ready supply of forfeited lands in the East Midlands for new lords to acquire: 'Cnut's reign saw the settlement of some Danish lords and "new men" were promoted, probably locally as well as regionally'. The result was a predominant patterning of discrete, recently created, estates in the Domesday record, in contrast to the large interlocking ancient structures of 'multiple estates'/ sokes / shires that some scholars have presumed the norm (ibid., 44–5; Chapter VII above).

Perhaps the process can even be seen in the sparse documentary record for Hickling. An estate at Hickling and Kinoulton was given to Ramsey Abbey during the reign of Æthelred II (978–1016) (Hadley 2000a, 162, 174); but according to the Domesday entry the sizeable principal holding in Hickling was in secular hands (Morris 1977, 20,8) and Ramsey had no interest. The fuller evidence for Peterborough Abbey shows that that the Fenland abbey lost estates across the north Midlands and southern Yorkshire at precisely this juncture through failure to pay the geld on them. Their forfeiture led directly to the estates' re-allocation into the hands of capable seculars, as was the case at Barton-upon-Humber (Roffe 2011). Archaeological evidence for a small, presumably Christian, burial ground some 225 m south east of St Luke's churchyard at Hickling (noted with references in Chapter VII, p. 83) points to a secondary phase of church creation and centralization of burial in a churchyard akin to that encountered at Barton-upon-Humber and studied elsewhere in northern Lincolnshire (Rodwell with Atkins 2011, 169–236; Hadley 2000b). For Hadley and Buckberry, there was a protracted attempt by the Church, dependent on local circumstances, 'to gain control over burial during the tenth and eleventh centuries', of which the archaeological evidence at Hickling may be a further example (Hadley and Buckberry 2005, 121). Perhaps the family (?father/ ?grandfather) of the Turkill and Godwin who held Hickling as two manors (Morris 1977, 20,8) was the new lord, who (on the pattern we have explored through the incidence of sculpture in Lincolnshire (Everson and Stocker 1999, 76–9)) founded the church and graveyard at Hickling and marked that with a notable founder's monument, using its decoration both to recall his Scandinavian roots and (as Stocker has suggested, see below) to celebrate his conversion to the Christian religion and cement his place in the local Anglo-Scandinavian community.

All that said, the foregoing is only one way of looking at the complex monument that is Hickling 1. Dating this monument to the early eleventh century raises a series of questions. Specifically, it might be argued that the shallowly coped basic form of the monument is no more than a necessary product of the shape of the Roman half-column from which it was manufactured (Fig. 19) and of the most efficient conversion of it to a chest-like cover of hogback type. Formally the result is clearly a monument of 'hogback' type, as Lang categorized it, because it has a bowed profile, a 'roofed' cross-section and three-dimensional beasts clasping the ridge-rib at either end (Lang 1984, 88, 140), the 'coped' form is merely a subset of the 'hogback' type. The form of the cross-head is clear, but the interpretation that it is a long-stemmed, processional-type image is perhaps not as clear-cut as assumed in the comparisons cited: the apex of the coping is at the same time the ridge of the hogback form and the division between the decorative panels, without being distinctively marked out as a shaft to the cross. The cross is merely incidentally offset to one end.

As a 'hogback' form in the East Midlands, however, Hickling 1 finds parallels with examples from the derivative sub-group of hogback monuments which we have called the 'Trent Valley' hogback type (Everson and Stocker 1999, 35–6; Stocker and Everson 2001; this volume, p. 51, Fig. 7), rather than with the true hogbacks. This sub-type includes grave-covers at Cranwell 2 (Lincolnshire: Everson and Stocker 1999, 136–9), Shelton 1 (Nottinghamshire: p. 165), a hogback from St Alkmund's, Derby (now in Derby Museum: Radford 1976, 53–4, no. 9; Lang 1984, 128); plus two somewhat differently proportioned stones with similar geometry at Lythe on the north Yorkshire coast (Lang 1984, 154; 2001, 164–5, nos. 30–31). Lang called this group the 'wheel rim' type within his hogback classification (1984, 101, fig. 9). Unlike the monuments at Lythe — which were the ones Lang was most familiar with — Cranwell and Shelton 1 have a great cross in their centre (Ill. 189; Fig. 25, p. 166), and it is this cross that offers a link with the Hickling monument, although the crosses themselves are of quite different formats and the infilling decoration in those cases deploys no animals. In respect of animal forms, the Hickling monument bears similarity with the fragmentary coped grave-cover from York Minster (Lang 1991, 76, no. 43), which does have them disposed around a centrally-placed cross. None of these, though, has a comparable form of cross, which makes handling of surrounding decoration so awkward, or a so-markedly asymmetrical layout.

Lang's work brought the categorization of this monument as a 'hogback' firmly to the fore, but earlier scholars such as Kendrick had focused rather on the form and detailing of the beasts, associating them typologically with 'Mercian great beasts' and proposing an earlier, tenth-century date (Kendrick 1949, 80–1).

A style-critical analysis of the fine interlace-wreathed animals with which it is decorated reveals Hickling as a 'hybrid' or 'transitional' monument. The six very similar Hickling quadrupeds, with their square heads and truncated snouts, their bold eyes and their spiral hips, have often been associated with what Brøndsted called the 'Great Beast' style which merges imperceptibly with the full-blown Jellinge style (Brøndsted 1924, 209; Kendrick 1949, 77–82, 87–97; Wilson and Klindt-Jensen 1980, 95–118; Wilson 1984, 146). The style's characteristics are most frequently found in stone sculpture rather than any other medium. Its common feature is a quadruped wreathed in a self-contained pattern of interlace. These quadrupeds represent only a distant link with pre-Viking inhabited scrolls, and the group of monuments displaying them is large, but many writers have seen them as a sign of continuity between the art styles of the pre-Viking and the Viking ages. A large number of monuments from York and Yorkshire exhibit such beasts, carved in a variety of styles and with varying skill (Lang 1991; 2001). Sometimes the animals themselves are transformed into ribbons of interlace themselves, so that it is hard to distinguish the beast from the interlace in which it is entangled; in other examples the animals are zoologically credible. Many of these Yorkshire examples have rectangular bodies outlined with a secondary line and square gaping muzzles with prominent eyes like those at Hickling, for example the cover fragment from Clifford Street, York (Lang 1991, 102–3, no. 1). Intriguingly, the animals on face B of the Nunburnholme cross also take this form, and Lang thought these related to the primary phase of work there (Lang 1977). None of these examples is closely dated, though generalized dates of 'late ninth or tenth century' have been refined and they are now associated more specifically with the period of Anglo-Norse activity in the kingdom of York in the first half of the tenth century. Amongst these Hiberno-Norse monuments the hogback at Pickhill, Yorkshire NR (Lang 2001, 194, no. 4) is particularly relevant to Hickling. Here the quadruped decorates the side panel of a monument which originally featured a bear on the gable, though it is now only represented by one surviving paw (ibid., ill. 737). Collingwood associated the Pickhill monument with one at Plumbland, Cumbria, where the side of the hogback is decorated with an interlace terminating in a snake/bird head, as at Hickling (1927, 128–9; Bailey and Cramp 1988, 143, no. 2). Collingwood also associated both these northern hogbacks with the Hickling monument and the Nunburnholme shaft. The decoration on the Hickling monument, then, sits comfortably amongst a large group of stone sculptures of the early or mid tenth century, which may have specifically Hiberno-Norse associations.

Hickling lies a long way south of these examples of this style of animal sculpture. But there are southern outliers of the group closer to hand, which particularly include the sculptures found at St Alkmund's church in Derby, both when the medieval church was demolished in 1841–4 and when the replacement Victorian church was in turn demolished to make way for a road scheme in 1967 (Radford 1976). The St Alkmund's shaft section designated no. 5 by Radford (ibid., 48–51, pls. 6–7) has several quadrupeds wreathed in interlace that bear close comparison with those at Hickling, in the shapes and execution of their bodies and heads, as well as in the patterns of their interlace entanglements. The 'Trent Valley' hogback now in Derby Museum, whose affinity with Hickling was noted above, also came from St Alkmund's church (ibid., pl. 10a). The fragment from a shaft at Peakirk, Soke of Peterborough, also includes interlace with bird/snake head terminals, which provides a point of comparison with both Hickling and the St Alkmund's hogback (Markham 1901, 95; Kendrick 1949, 79). Whereas shafts at Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire, and Ashbourne, Derbyshire, also have beasts wreathed in interlace in generically similar fashion (Clapham 1927, 223, pl. XXXV; Routh 1937, 4–5, pl. Ib), their execution bears no detailed similarity to Hickling and St Alkmund's.

Clearly the monuments most directly relevant to Hickling 1 in their style and decoration are the cover fragment — trimmed and re-cut on its back for reuse in the outer order of a twelfth-century arcade — from Narborough, Leicestershire (in Jewry Wall Museum at Leicester: Parsons 1996, 17, 19; Cramp and Story in preparation; see Ills. 183–4) and the fine shaft at Desborough, Northamptonshire (Markham 1901, 51– 3; Cramp and Story in preparation; see Ills. 181–2). [2] Narborough is a shallowly hipped cover, probably of similar original size to Hickling, in that tradition that runs from the substance and decorative elaboration of Shelton 2 (p. 168) to such plain overlap or post-Conquest examples as Lincoln St Mark 25–27 (Everson and Stocker 1999, 285–6). The effects of its reuse have removed evidence of whether it was decorated on its long sides. But the decoration of its top was structured, like Hickling, around a splay-armed cross on the ridge; the three surviving decorative fields are filled with animals with heads thrown back, raised front paws, double outlined bodies, backgrounds of enmeshing triquetra knots and large round pellets. The close similarity with Hickling's animals are confirmed by details such as a spiral hip-joint and curly tail with arrow-head terminal. It might all be by the same hand as Hickling 1. While Narborough's stone type is said to be millstone grit, Desborough's is a sandstone of similarly fine-grained appearance to Hickling and pale reddish grey colour, though it is probably a Triassic sandstone — or less probably a Jurassic sandstone (inf. Roger Bristow) — rather than the Carboniferous Millstone Grit of Hickling. Rather than similarity of stone type, it is the conception and execution of the decoration that affords the most relevant comparison. Desborough features panels with animal figures on two surviving faces, and like Hickling they are executed by removing relatively large areas of stone to create extensive shallowly sunken surfaces from which the reserved ornamentation stands sharply proud. Clearly as part of this conception, large pellets or discs are randomly deployed as space-fillers in the panels on both faces, as also at Hickling. The beasts are long-necked and paired and there are signs of incised contouring of the bodies and sketchy spiralling of hip or shoulder joints, in a very similar manner to the Nottinghamshire cover. The web of enmeshing interlace strands, springing indifferently from a tail or from no logical source, routinely loop once round neck and body and form nothing more ambitious than pointed return knots in patterns as simple and limited as those at Hickling. A horizontal panel at Desborough, on the west face as the shaft is currently displayed (Kendrick 1949, pl. LII, 1; see Ill. 181), is filled with a symmetrical return loop of interlace with the same pointed knots and a ring over the central cross-over. A further point of specific analogy occurs on the south face, where the tail of the left-hand beast is finished with a distinctively and clearly deliberately serrated inner edge (ibid., pl. LII, 2; see Ill. 182). This is analogous to the peculiar, serrated treatment of the upper edge of the left arm of the cross on Hickling 1. Lacking an obvious purpose in either case (pace the discussion above), it might be thought to amount to a carver's 'signature'.

With such similarities of style and detail, were these monuments by the same hand, as Kendrick indeed conjectured? At all events the relationship might suggest a comparability of date for Hickling, Narborough and Desborough. Kendrick thought so and suggested a date after 950, on the basis that the deployment of a form of Mercian beasts marked the recovery of the territory of the Five Boroughs initiated by the Mercian-Wessex alliance under Edward the Elder and Æthelflead and secured by mid century (Kendrick 1949, 79–81). But for others the Desborough shaft appears stylistically earlier (Cramp 1977, 230, emphasizing the continuity of the beasts from the pre-Viking era) or even later (Stone, L. 1955, 240 n.20 places Desborough, with Hickling, among the 'dreary and incompetent work in the south midlands between 950 and 1066'), or just not sufficiently distinctive to fix. Elements of the same decorative package — enmeshed beast, triquetra and pelleted fillers — occur in the area on what may have been a shaft from Enderby (in the Jewry Wall Museum, Leicester — Clough et al. 1975, 48), that is not in the same stone or quality of finish. Desborough can hardly be pre-Viking because, in addition to the fact that the animals are far removed from the finest work at St Alkmund's, Derby, which Wilson and Klindt-Jensen date to the final quarter of the ninth century (1980, 114), the panel with addorsed beasts on its present west face also features, centrally at the top, a detached head of triangular form (Kendrick 1949, pl. LII, 1; see Ill. 181). This is not a bull's-head in the manner of mid-Kesteven covers, since the face has a distinct moustache, but at the same time there are lumps to either side of the temples which read as horns. Is this simply a loose head, such as occurs on the eleventh-century finger ring from Fishergate in York? (recently re-dated by Leslie Webster, pers. comm.) Or more specifically an image of the ancient god Cernunnos, putatively a deity of nature and fertility (Green 1992, 227–8) and best known in northern art from the antler-clad figure on the Gundestrup cauldron? If so, this Desborough shaft embraces a syncretic agenda, in an analogous manner to the Hickling cover (below), which provides a further link — of outlook and purpose, rather than merely style or date — between the two monuments.

Early tenth century, or perhaps early eleventh century?

Browne 1888–93; Allen 1889, 230; Irvine 1890, 71–2, fig. facing 72; (—) 1904, 151; Allen 1906, 558; Godfrey 1907, 226, 229–30 & drawing; Robertson 1910, 80 & drawing; Cox 1912a, 112; Hill 1916a, 204, fig. 5; Brøndsted 1924, 207, 209, 229, fig. 157; Collingwood 1927, 129; Guilford 1927, 36, 98; Mee 1938, 130; Wood, A. 1947, 33; Shetelig 1948, 96; Kendrick 1949, 80–1, pl. LIII; Pevsner 1951, 14, 81; Marsden 1953, 130; Shetelig 1954, 136; Stone 1972, 240 n.20; Lang 1978b, 153; Pevsner and Williamson 1979, 18, 143; Lang 1984, 88, 106, 108, 109, 140–1 & plates; Plunkett 1984, i, 106–10, ii, 267, 299, pl. 15a; Thorold 1984, 82; Stafford 1985, 174, fig. 63; Honeybone 1987, 15–16; Lang 1988, 46–7, 57, pl. 24; Lang 1991, 39, 76, 103; Billson 1994, 16 & plate; Lang 1994, 39, 76, 103; Sidebottom 1994, 133, 149, 251 & plates; Everson and Stocker 1999, 46, 117; Wilson 2008, 24; Kleinsmith 2011, 18–19, figs. 1–3

[1] The following are unpublished manuscript references to Hickling 1: Nottinghamshire Archives Office, DD/TS/14/32/3, p. 23 ('Notes on churches visited No. IV' by Arthur Barratt of Lambley); BL, Add. MS 37552, ff. 186–92, illus.

[2] We are grateful to Professor Cramp for alerting us to the existence of the Narborough cover (Blank 1970, 29, fig. 22; Clough et al. 1975, 66, pl. 14c), and for discussing with us the important relationship of it and the shaft at Desborough to Hickling 1.