Reused as part of a door sill in the north-east corner of the refectory undercroft, with two unrelated stones of similar petrology making up this threshold (see Ill. 153).

The five stones are set in modern concrete to make this door sill. The three cover fragments had been previously broken up for a reuse before the present one: stones 1b and 1c result from the rough splitting of the original cover across, then lengthwise in half, and stone 1a has a row of depressions along its centre line which represent the blows of a heavy blade seeking to split this stone lengthwise in the same manner. It seems very likely that the present reuse results from the stones' discovery and putting aside for retention during the clearance of the conventual buildings of the Gilbertine priory site following its acquisition by the state in 1913 ([Peers] 1913, 43; Thurley 2013, 82–3), and their subsequent incorporation into the displayed fabric during its consolidation. There are several other examples of this process on display elsewhere in the ruins. They include a piece of grave-cover noted by Charlton as having been reused as the threshold of the door opening in the north wall of the monastic kitchen, whose only decoration is a section of cross stem (Charlton 1972, 6).

St Helen

The stones' preparation for a phase of reuse predating their current deployment suggests a primary reuse as ashlars, using the cover's original edge as the facing surface. The upper surfaces of all three stones are somewhat, though evenly, weathered and they are abraded from their present location, but not so as to suggest that this position is of long-standing or that any form of incised decoration has been eroded.

All three stones are decorated with an identical, simple, precisely-cut angle-roll running round the edge of the cover. There is no sign that the roll was ornamented with a cable. Stone 1a has this moulding along both its surviving edges, which gives the width of the original monument as 48 cm (18.9 in), and there is no measurable taper within its limited surviving length. None of the stones displays evidence for the moulding turning at head or foot of the cover: it seems, therefore, that these stones make up much of the centre of the original. The panel within the moulding contains no sign of any decoration, and what survives is not so weathered as to encourage conjecture that there was ever any decoration. Probably the panel was uncarved.

Appendix A item (stones dating from Saxo-Norman overlap period or of uncertain date)

This simple grave-cover is representative of a type of monument that is quite well known in the East Midlands and is usually dated generically to the late eleventh or early twelfth century. Examples in Nottinghamshire include Blyth 1, North Muskham 1 and possibly Halloughton 1, reported here (pp. 199, 202 and below). As with Blyth 1, particular comparison can be drawn with one of the covers excavated from St Mark's church in Lincoln, Lincoln St Mark 27. This had an excavated context and was accorded a twelfth-century date, yet was thought to represent a poor-quality copy of a somewhat earlier monument type (Everson and Stocker 1999, 286, ills. 416–17). What now amounts to a recognizable local monument type in Nottinghamshire is also characterized by its use of a local stone type, rather than an imported limestone. This, too, is a feature of the latest pre-Conquest and earliest post-Conquest stone monuments of a workaday type — grave-covers and -markers in the county.

Mattersey Priory was not founded as a Gilbertine house until 1185 (Charlton 1972, 3–4). So, in contrast to the very similar grave-cover at Blyth, it is perhaps less likely that this monument marked the grave of an early patron or convent member. Rather, it might represent the first tangible evidence that there was an earlier ecclesiastical presence on the island in the floodplain of the River Idle, to which — in a familiar pattern — the priory was a successor.

Late eleventh or twelfth century

Unpublished