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Object type: Part of hogback
Measurements: L. 116.8 cm (46 in); W. 23 cm (9 in); D. 67 > 43 cm (26 > 17 in)
Stone type: Medium-grained red sandstone (St Bees sandstone)
Plate numbers in printed volume: 35 - 7, 40
Corpus volume reference: Vol 2 p. 53-54
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Hogback, type b.
A (long): The high curved roof-ridge is decorated with an angular two-strand twist and terminates in an inward-facing end-beast with open fanged mouth. Below are two rows of type 9 tegulation, each shingle carrying triquetra decoration carved in relief; between the rows is a cabled moulding. Under the tegulation is a band of incised step pattern 1, bordered by cabled mouldings, which overhangs the decoration on the wall.
The wall is divided into two sunken and two raised panels. The remains of the sunken panel to the left were decorated with relief ornament of now unidentifiable type. The adjacent raised panel is bordered laterally by three delicate roll mouldings and contains two registers of interlace, spiralled half pattern A with looped terminal below. The main surviving sunken panel was decorated with a prancing animal seen in profile enmeshed in the knotted extensions of tail, tongue, and head lappets. The body is contoured and the backward-thrown head bites with open jaws towards the neck. The lower jaw has a lappet. The knots above the beast's back are probably extensions from the tail. What survives of the raised panel at the end of this side carries the remains of a ring-knot formed of strands with a median-incised line, bordered by a roll moulding.
B (end): Plain.
C (long): The ridge decoration is identical to that on A, but more of the upper border survives on this side. Almost all traces of the end-beast have disappeared. The upper row of type 9 tegulation, some of the second row, and the cabled moulding separating them, still remain; the shingles are decorated with triquetra ornament, as on the other side. The rest of the roof ornament has now been worn away, and all that survives on the side is a fragment of interlace of complete turned A executed in median-incised strands.
D (end): Broken away.
This is one of the most elaborate hogbacks to survive in England. The ambitious nature of the monument is signalled by the fact that much of its ornament cannot be paralleled amongst the rest of the hogback series; nowhere else do we find decorated shingles, cabled moulding between the tegulae, ornamental strips at the eaves-line, or triple mouldings on the side panels. Other details, such as the shape of the tegulation, the high ridge, and the fangs given to the beasts, occur only on very sophisticated monuments such as Gosforth 5 and Lowther 5 in Cumbria; or across the Pennines at Sockburn, co. Durham and Wycliffe, Yorkshire (Lang 1984, 166, 168); or in Scotland at Meigle, Perthshire, Govan, Lanarkshire, and St Vigeans, Forfarshire (Lang 1972–4, 225, 229, 232). The bodiless end-beast is best paralleled on Gosforth 5.
The interlace on side C is of the rare type used on the large cross from Aspatria (no. 1) and provides a further link between the decorative repertoires of the two types of monument which can also be shown at other sites like Gosforth and Penrith, and at Brompton, Yorkshire. The animal ornament with its Jellinge features places the carving firmly in a tenth-century context.
