Winchester City Museum, accession number 848

Found in 1910 in garden of Priors Barton; Close suggests perhaps originally from St Faith's churchyard near-by (Close and Collingwood 1922)

Priors Barton

Pale grey (speckled dark green), fine-grained (0.2-mm quartz grains), glauconitic sandstone, with possibly cherty cement; Upper Greensand, Gault group, Lower Cretaceous; Hampshire or Wiltshire

The shaft is of circular section and tapers towards the upper end where it is broken roughly horizontally. The underside is dressed flat. Around the lower edge is a broad, plain raised border, and the circumference is divided into four equal fields by similar vertical borders on stepped bases.

A: This field contains a bush scroll. The thick half-round stem develops from the lower frame. From each side of the stem emerges one of a pair of thick, out-turned subsidiary stems, each of which develops into tight interlace filling the interstices between the main stem and the edge of the field. Above them is a pair of upward-leaning, expanding stems, each terminating in an inward-facing animal head touching the main stem, and curling round one of a pair of thick, down-turned stems developing from the main stem just above the scrolls. From the upper part of the stem develop six closely-spaced pairs of narrow, outward-curving leaves.

B: This field is decorated with a naturalistically-modelled stag facing left, with its hindquarters against the right-hand frame. It is heavily damaged but has a long neck, and antlers developing into disorganised interlace filling the interstices between the animal and the border.

C: This area is decorated with a bush- or tree-scroll, now largely destroyed. It has a vertical stem with two subsidiary stems curling back, one on each side of the main stem. Each is brought round to touch the main stem before terminating in a berry bunch, and acanthus leaves filling the space between the main stem and the border.

D: This field is decorated with interlace, now largely destroyed.

The piece is probably a single drum from a round shaft built in sections. As with Winchester (High Street) no. 1 (Ills. 679–82), the use of this form points to a date no earlier than the ninth century when the round shaft appears to have been introduced (Cramp 1978, 9). As noted in Chap. V, despite the occurrence here of acanthus ornament, the repertoire of decoration and the way that it is combined would point to a date in the ninth rather than the tenth century.

Ninth century

Close and Collingwood 1922, 219 - 20, figs. following 220; Cottrill 1931, appendix; Kendrick 1938, 191 - 2, pl. LXXXV; Atkinson 1938 - 40, 369; Green and Green 1951, 46 - 7, pl. XIV; Stone 1955, 25; Rix 1960, 78; Cunliffe 1973, 43; Cramp 1975, 189 - 191; Tweddle 1983b, 22 - 8, 30, pl. VIIIb; Backhouse et al. 1984, 42; Budny and Tweddle 1984, 80 - 2; Tweddle 1986b, i, 95, 151 - 4, ii, 515 - 16, iii, fig. 19, pl. 121 - 2a