Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission Stores, Dover castle (reg. no. 7820 3095)

None; possibly one of 'smaller' pre-Conquest fragments found built into the Romanesque screen foundations overlying west end of abbot Wulfric's rotunda (begun c. 1049, demolished c. 1073) recorded in Hope 1917

St Augustine's abbey

Broken into two pieces, with some loss around the join, damage to the angles of the base, and light bruising all over; unweathered

The base is rectangular in plan and of rectangular section. The front right corner is broken away, and the upper corners to the rear left and right broken. The lower end of the shaft consists of a square fillet above which is a narrow roll moulding, then a deep hollow. Above this is a feature consisting of a wide roll moulding flanked by two narrower roll mouldings. The shaft then expands towards another similar feature at the mid-point of the shaft, before tapering again. At the upper end of the shaft is another wide roll moulding flanked by two narrower mouldings. Above this the baluster expands again with three hollows flanked by three narrow roll mouldings. At the upper end is a plain square fillet. At the front of the shaft is a deep nick of triangular section in the tapering plain section just below the upper end (Ill. 42). There is a similar deep nick at the rear in the equivalent position at the lower end (Ill. 43). In the centre of the upper and lower ends are shallow, square hollows.

The placing of deep nicks on opposite sides and opposite ends of the shaft is suggestive not of accidental damage, but rather of a deliberate attempt to break up the baluster; indeed, the lower nick caused the baluster to break into two. The hollows on the ends (Ills. 44–5) were designed to accommodate the mandrels of the lathe on which the baluster was turned.

This piece is similar, but not identical, to the baluster from Dover (St Mary in Castro) nos. 2–3 (Ills. 64–7, 71–5). The Dover fragments may be contemporary with the surviving late Anglo-Saxon fabric of the church; it is possible that there was originally a belfry stage to the central tower, which was remodelled in the thirteenth century. One of the balusters at Dover (no. 3b; Ill. 80) is recut to form a section of early Gothic moulding, probably a vault rib. Certainly where turned balusters of this general type occur in south-east England, as at Oxford (St Michael) no. 1 (Ills. 364–70), they are probably of late Anglo-Saxon date.

Tenth or eleventh century

Hope 1917, 24; Brown 1925, 266; Taylor and Taylor 1966, 48