As Stapleford 1

See Stapleford 1

St Helen

Badly weathered and covered with moss and lichen, but intact. Using powers acquired from the 1900 Ancient Monuments Protection Act, Nottinghamshire County Council inserted the row of revolving ornamental metal spikes around the base in 1909 (Stapleton 1911, 142–3). Its form prior to this can be seen in early illustrations (Ills. 141, 194).

Although it was reported that the steps, with which the cross had been surrounded since the eighteenth century (see Stapleford 1), were stood upright to make the tall sub-base on which the shaft was re-mounted and remained until after the First World War (Scattergood 1884, 92), the present sub-base appears modern and dates from 1928, when the shaft was moved back from the crossroads to its present location. This lower square is of coursed Millstone Grit blocks generally similar to the early monument; but its stones probably came, new, from the long-lived quarries at Stanton-by-Dale, just across the Erewash in Derbyshire (G. Lott pers. comm.; see Stanley 1990, 175–6). However, the uppermost eight stones, which together form a truncated pyramid, were transported along with the shaft itself from the crossroads at that time.

The pyramid is made of three layers of stonework. The lowest layer consists of four massive stones, which are fixed together with large iron clamps across their joints.

The next layer is distinctively thin and probably consists of a single stone with perhaps a slightly different hue and weathering properties. It might be a modern filler, inserted to give the pyramid a more uniform, single, smooth slope when the monument was moved and re-erected. But it cannot be differentiated geologically from the stones of the upper and lower layers, and exposures of this stone type routinely feature upper, thin-bedded layers offering stone like this, so that it might have been available from the same source at the same time as the remainder of the base. It is probably best to view this layer as introducing a slight but attractive complexity into the original profile of the base.

The uppermost layer is of three stones with identical characteristics to the massive blocks of the lowest layer and similar iron clamps, together making up a truncated pyramid. Presumably the central stone, with only a simple chamfer at either end (in contrast to the more complex corners fashioned on the outer stones), has a mortice hole at its centre to house the tenon of the decorated shaft. It is not now ascertainable whether this is a socket of limited depth or — perhaps more probably — a hole through the full thickness of this stone.

Each of the corner angles of both the upper and lower levels is decorated with a simple, broad and shallow, roll moulding. As a result of differential weathering, this is now clearest at the north-west and north-east corners (Ill. 144).

As an ensemble, this structure makes a substantial base for the shaft. Photographs of the shaft taken prior to the First World War show the same eight stones in the same arrangement visible today (e.g. those in the Romilly Allen collection, BL, Add. MS 37552, ff. 231–237; see Ill. 194). The observation by Arthur Barratt, visiting in 1887, is even more important, as he reports that 'the shaft and base lay in the churchyard and about that time [i.e. c.1760] it was set up in its present position' (Nottinghamshire Archives Office, DD/TS 14/32/1, p. 75; see Stapleford 1 above), as he thereby identifies the base, Stapleford 2, as part of the monument in its earliest known form, when it lay in St Helen's churchyard. It has to be said, however, that we do not know how Barratt came by this information.

The stones forming the base of the Stapleford shaft are indistinguishable in their petrology from the shaft, except in being a little more pebbly and in the fact that the shaft is cut and set up in 'end-bedded' fashion. Extremely weathered now, the base stones were clearly already greatly weathered by the time of the earliest photographs. This might encourage the thought that they are of early date and contemporary with the shaft. Furthermore, the sheer size of the individual blocks might also suggest that they are early. It is an assessment supported by their simple decoration, whose plain roll echoes those serving — doubled and trebled — to mark off the zones of the lower parts of the shaft. Its form and arrangement — more tellingly still — match the simple angle rolls that ornament at least three of the four capitals of the central columns of the mausoleum at nearby Repton, which are themselves inverted truncated pyramids (Taylor and Taylor 1965, ii, 510–16; Taylor 2002, especially 15–20). This offers support for the pre-Viking date we propose for Stapleford 1, and a link to the monumental showpiece of late Mercian royalty in the mausoleum of Wiglaf and the burial place of St Wystan that chimes with our positioning it in a Mercian, imperial context.

The form of the composite base — a truncated pyramid — is unusual; but the Stapleford 1 shaft is exceptionally tall and of exceptionally large diameter, and it may well be that such a shaft required such a composite base, constructed of several stones and arranged in this pyramidal form, to make it stable. On the other hand, all early shaft bases that have been recorded previously (and there are many) are monoliths with sockets of different sizes cut into them. There seem to be no other recognized examples of early shaft bases that take this form. If the Stapleford base-structure is pre-Viking in date, then, it would represent an example of a hitherto unrecognized base type.

Probably first half of the ninth century; otherwise mid eighteenth century

As Stapleford 1