Winchester City Museum, Historic Resources Centre, Hyde House, Winchester, accessions no. 2943 WS 64

Found in archaeological excavation north of Winchester cathedral in 1965 in medieval burial earth above demolished tenth-century east apse of Old Minster; Final Phase 73-4 (Provisional Phase 700), early to mid thirteenth-century

Old Minster

Only one dressed face survives; the moulding is battered.

The dressed face on the left cuts across the colonnette before it has completed its curvature, so that a second stone is needed to complete it. A rounded band, 1 cm wide and about 4 cm in diameter, gathers in the colonnette horizontally. The upper and lower elements flare out from this central band. The lower has a carved bottom edge and thus completes the scheme; it is 2.3 cm high. The upper element is similar but broken away; it survives to a height of 2.6 cm. The background surface survives to the right and below the carving.

This may be a small part of a complex carving, a horizontal or vertical moulding of egg-and-dart type: compare, for example, baluster friezes like those at Jarrow, co. Durham (nos. 25 and 28), and Hexham, Northumberland (nos. 25–6). The Jarrow pieces are dated by Cramp to the late seventh or early eighth century, the Hexham pieces to the last quarter of the seventh century (Cramp 1984, i, 118–20, 188–9, ii, pls. 101 (540), 102 (547), 183 (983, 989)).

Seventh to ninth century

Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle forthcoming a, fig. 147, no. 56