In Newark Museum stone store; accession number 10.80/40807

'It came from a gravel pit immediately south-east of South Muskham church (SK 795573) and probably derived from it' (Barley 1983, 84). Barley's published note is to some extent misleading, and Newark Museum's 'Object History File' (ref. 10.80) records more specific details. The find was made by Mr F. A. Cobb of Southwell in the early months of 1980 and the precise location, as identified on a 1:10,000 scale Ordnance Survey map extract, was at SK 79685729. That is some 300 metres east of the church and on the far side of the main east-coast railway line, where the former gravel quarries at South Muskham now lie water-filled. The stone was collected from the site by Vernon Radcliffe, then keeper of Newark Museum, on 5 March 1980 and accessioned accordingly.

Poor. The whole surface of the stone is extremely weathered, though some areas much more than others. In particular, the moulding along one side of the arris surrounding the sculpted panels is completely weathered away, as compared with the corresponding surface on the other side of the panel, and this must suggest that this side has faced the weather whilst the other has been sheltered. The surviving angle is also broken away, and the break has been greatly weathered after breakage, suggesting that this zone too was exposed to the elements for a great period of time. The stone is also roughly broken, as though for rubble. It retains no sign of re-cutting for reuse, which is unusual with such a large and high-quality stone. The whole stone was friable when found; on the advice of the British Museum laboratory, it was conserved in 1980 in a treatment recorded as 'soaked in aqua dis. then acetone — air dried — consolidated with 10% PVA in acetone under vacuum' (Newark Museum 'Object History File'). The process may have been the cause of the stone's present irregular coloration.

A (broad): The face is canted, so that the decorated face sloped somewhat from the vertical, with what was the original lower edge projecting by a centimetre or two further from the vertical than the upper. The decoration on this face, no doubt like all four originally decorated faces, occupies a long, originally horizontal, panel confined within two elaborate arris mouldings. The lower moulding survives in reasonable condition and consists of a lower fillet with two half rolls above, the lower larger than the upper. The upper moulding was probably of the same profile, but it has been completely eroded away by heavy water and weather action. Within the panel so defined is a run of complex, accurately executed, interlace consisting of deeply-cut strands of sharp U-section. The undulating strands form loops resembling half pattern E or a V-bend pattern (Cramp 1991, figs. 21 and 26, Av), but it is not one of those illustrated amongst the named examples in Cramp's study of ornament types. Unfortunately, damage to the angle with face B means that we cannot tell how the pattern was terminated.

B (narrow): The mouldings confining the decorated panel on this face are the same as those on face A and have the same distinctive pattern of weathering. Within the panel defined by the mouldings, the interlace, though similarly deeply cut and of the same sharp U-section, takes a different pattern from that on face A. It appears to be a form of half pattern C with outside strand and added diagonal (Cramp 1991, fig. 22).

C (broad) and D (narrow): Both faces are completely destroyed through breakage.

F (under side): The large rebate cut into this face is about 4 cm deep and inset from the lower edge of the moulding by about 10 cm, giving the stone a substantial overhang. The space within the rebate is very much less weathered than the external surfaces of the stone.

E (upper side): The rebate here, of approximately similar section to that on face F, is so greatly weathered, that it is now perhaps two centimetres less deep overall than its fellow.

This stone is not a highly decorated architectural impost as originally suggested by Maurice Barley (1983). Not only does the decoration make little sense in an architectural context, but the rebating on faces E and F makes no sense at all in a stone used for such an architectural purpose. The distinctive features that confirm the correct interpretation of the stone are the two large, precisely-cut rebates originally four centimetres deep on faces F and E, though the latter (the uppermost in the original formation) is now reduced by weathering to only two centimetres. This highly distinctive form defines the stone as the remnant of a collar from a very large standing cross. It was a separate structural element, intended to form a structural and decorative junction between two upright monoliths that formed the cross-shaft itself (see Fig. 29; Stalley 1996, 5–13 helpfully illustrates the form and constructional characteristics of large composite crosses, though without referring to collars, which are an additional element not found in Ireland: Mac Lean 1995; Redknap and Lewis 2007, 65). Large though this stone is, therefore, it represents only a tiny fraction of the monument from which it originally came. Although it is hard to tell how tall the two monoliths would have stood when joined together by this stone, we might nevertheless conjecture an original height of perhaps four metres: comparable instances in south Wales, as at Llandough (below), certainly stand three metres tall. At the minimum, each monolith would have been at least 35 cm by 25 cm in cross-section; i.e. larger in section than the Shelford cross and much larger than that at Rolleston.

Some major Insular cross-shafts were composed of separate monoliths in the fashion plainly indicated at South Muskham; relatively few such monuments survive intact, however, because the structures created were inherently much less stable than those manufactured from a single stone. Perhaps the best-known early example that preserves both of its monoliths set within their original collar is the monument known as the 'Irbic' Cross at Llandough in south Glamorgan (Redknap and Lewis 2007, 329–37, figs. G42b–e; see Ill. 196 below). Although much more crudely decorated, and of later tenth- or early eleventh-century date, the Llandough monument not only illustrates the technique, but also shows how large these collars sometimes were to support substantial monoliths (illustrated as a detached item, ibid., 335, fig. G42m). An example at Coychurch from this same south Wales group of composite shafts also exhibits a particularly closely similar pattern of differential wear and damage to its collar as is seen at South Muskham (Coychurch 2, ibid., 288–92, figs. G16a–f). These great crosses of three (or even more) stones must have provided the model for the larger group of later shafts which have a collar actually carved within a single monolith. This latter group was briefly considered by Baldwin Brown (1937, 274–6), including both the early ninth-century example at Nunnykirk, Northumberland (ibid., pl. LXVIII), as well as tenth- and eleventh-century examples such as those we discussed in Lincolnshire at Creeton 1 and the Elloe Stone (Everson and Stocker 1999, 29, 140, 163, ills. 124–7, 171–2, 176–8). In these examples, a feature that had started out as a structural necessity for constructing large monuments of more than one stone became a design feature that alluded to the importance of the monument. Perhaps unsurprisingly, examples of composite crosses like South Muskham are difficult to detect and are thus rarely identified. The ninth-century sculpture at West Tanfield (no. 2) in the North Riding of Yorkshire (Lang 2001, 228–9, ills. 887–8, 893–6), for example, is probably the upper monolith in a monument that would also have featured a collar such as that at South Muskham. This might also have been the original function of the peculiar item at Henstridge (Somerset) thought to be of similar date, although the best one can say is that this explanation is no less likely than the others that have been proposed (Cramp 2006, 159–60, ills. 258–66).

The shaft ring from South Muskham can be dated only through the style of its interlace, which is of a skill and complexity that is rare locally in the period after the arrival of the Vikings. The application of similar, though not identical, interlace carvings to horizontal features in the manner of South Muskham is especially notable at Kirby Hill (Yorkshire North Riding), where it decorates one face of what is thought to be an impost block of the late eighth or early ninth century (Lang 2001, 134–5, fig. 16), and on similar architectural sculpture at Ripon Minster itself, thought to be of similar date (Coatsworth 2008, 239–41, ills. 671–5). These are all indications that the South Muskham piece should be dated to the late eighth or early ninth century.

The stone source for this major early item is the quarries of the Lincolnshire Jurassic uplands at Ancaster 20 miles to the south east. On the evidence gathered in Lincolnshire (Everson and Stocker 1999), South Muskham offers the first sign that these quarries were dealing in monumental, composite sculptures of large scale in the pre-Viking period, though they clearly were doing both later — in exploiting beds yielding the big blocks for mid-Kesteven covers, for example — and earlier, in the Roman period. Now, South Muskham 1, if not re-cycled Roman masonry, offers confirmation that large-scale composite monuments could be produced from these quarries at an early date.

The final question thrown up by the South Muskham fragment relates to the original purpose of such a large original monument. What was such a notable monument marking or commemorating? Maurice Barley's note (1983) places emphasis on the proximity of the reported find-spot to South Muskham churchyard, which would sit comfortably with his proffered, but incorrect, interpretation of the stone as an architectural feature from an ecclesiastical context. In fact, the record files at Newark Museum indicate clearly — by mapped location and eight-figure grid reference — the stone's find spot (above), though this has not entered county and national data-bases, which draw their information entirely from Barley's published note. Contemporary notices also say that the stone 'was found during working at a gravel pit by South Muskham railway crossing' (ibid.). This seems to preclude the possibility, present in these industrial circumstances, that the stone was brought to the Muskham gravel pit from somewhere else. Accepting, then, that it did indeed originate from the gravel workings in South Muskham parish, and some way east of the parish church towards the River Trent, some other explanation is required. Such pre-Viking cross-shafts, especially ones of such size and quality as that indicated here, are often taken to be indicators of early monasteries. Although its fabric contains some 'herringbone masonry' (Sutton 1895–6, 315), South Muskham church does not have the profile of architectural development or distinctiveness in its surviving medieval documentation to have been of any great importance. Unlike South Leverton, for example, there is nothing about the history or archaeology of South Muskham to encourage any such idea. As Barley noted, the manor was held by the archbishop of York at the end of the eleventh century: later the estate was a prebend of Southwell (Cox 1910b, 154). Yet South Muskham does have one very distinctive characteristic that might have resulted in the erection of a great standing cross in the parish during the pre-Viking period. The village stands immediately to the north of the point at which the northerly channel of the Trent was crossed by the old Great North Road. The precise age of this crossing cannot be established (though there are intense multi-period cropmarks in the vicinity (Garton with Leary and Nailor 2002; Knight and Howard 2004, figs. 5.18, 6.19)); but it is thought to have been in existence by the tenth century (Chapter III above, and see Fig. 12). Such a major crossing is very likely to have been marked in some way at an early period, and a standing cross at which prayers might be offered would be typical. Perhaps, then, South Muskham 1 is the last fragment of a cross standing at the northern or western end of a major Trent crossing? Such crosses, though undoubtedly of much later date, are reported on either side of the Trent crossing at Holme and North Muskham a mile and quarter to the north (Stapleton 1911, 130).

Late eighth or early ninth century

Barley 1983, 84, pl. 1

[1] The following is an unpublished manuscript reference to South Muskham 1: Newark Museum, 'Object History File' (ref. 10.80).