British Museum, accession numbers 83,12-19,1 and 2

None; found in City of London some time before Sir Augustus Franks gave stones to British Museum in 1884

City

Broken and chipped

Two fragments of a tapering grave-cover.²

A (top): Fragment a is broken roughly horizontally below, but irregularly above. The break rises from right to left. The upper left-hand corner is lost. Along the long edges of the convex upper face are narrow, plain, raised borders. The face is decorated in low, flat relief with a prominent cross placed diagonally, with bulbous, rounded-ended arms tapering markedly towards their inner ends and separated from the point of junction by pairs of transverse incised lines. From each re-entrant angle develops a pair of foliate tendrils which are linked together to encircle the cross-arms. To the left and right are three-element axial growths. Above, subsidiary tendrils run diagonally upwards to the left and right, with lobe-like axial growths at the junctions with the tendrils surrounding the cross-arms. In the V-shaped field thus created is a second pair of tendrils arranged in a V-shape with inward-facing, tightly-curled ends.

Fragment b is roughly broken horizontally above and below, but irregularly to the left. Along the right-hand edge of the convex, foliate decorated upper face is a narrow, plain, raised border. The face is decorated in low, flat relief with a pair of swags developing from the upper, broken, edge, and linked on the vertical axis by a union knot. Each swag is composed of three or more foliate tendrils. From them subsidiary groups of tendrils break away diagonally towards the lower left and right-hand corners. Of these only the left-hand group is well preserved with a branch from the outer tendril looping back around the inner tendril before dividing into two. Each division has a tightly-curled tip. The inner tendril breaks back and upwards towards the vertical axis of the stone, where it meets a similar tendril emerging from the damaged area to the right. On the vertical axis, developing from the lower edge, are two lobes clasped by a union knot.

Browne, comparing the style and technique of the fragments with that of the grave-marker from St Paul's in London, above, has suggested that they are by the same hand, and from the same grave. That they come from the same grave is unlikely given the amount of detail recorded for the discovery of the St Paul's stone, although they might have come from the same site. As noted above (in discussion London 1 (St Paul's cathedral)), there is evidence for the existence of a single workshop having produced all of these Ringerike-style pieces.

Eleventh century

Allen 1885b, 357; Browne 1885, 252 - 3, pl. II; Wimmer 1893 - 1908, 1.1, cxxxviii; Browne 1899 - 1901, 170; Bugge 1905, 349 - 50, fig. on 350; Page 1909, 168 - 9, fig. 32; Shetelig 1909, 97n.; Smith 1909 - 11, 398 - 9; Shetelig 1911, 45, 47, 49, fig. 7; Smith 1913 - 14, 71; Linqvist 1915, 75 - 80, fig. 40; Smith 1917, 239; Brøndsted 1920, 251 - 2, fig. 15; Smith 1923, 125 - 6, fig. 159; Brøndsted 1924, 235 - 6, 297, 300, figs. 170, 206; Åberg 1925, 146; Wheeler 1927, 52; Kendrick 1930, 31; Vulliamy 1930, 254 - 5; Cottrill 1931, 51, appendix; Wheeler 1935, 191; Shetelig 1940 - 54, VI, 141 - 2; Åberg 1941, 46, fig. 44; Kendrick 1941, 134; Jacobsen and Moltke 1941 - 2, i, cols. 480 - 81, no. 412a; Shetelig 1948, 102 - 3; Kendrick 1949, 100, pl. LXVIII; Holmqvist 1951, 24 - 5, 38, 40; Rice 1952, 128; Fisher 1959, 87; Rice 1960, 205; Marquardt 1961, 95 - 6; Jansson 1962, 51 - 2; Musset and Mossé 1965, 431, no. 133; Foote and Wilson 1970, 310; Page 1971, 166, n. 4; Wilson 1974, 7 - 8, fig. on 7; Fuglesang 1980, no. 89, 27, 57, 59, 63 - 4, 102 - 3, pl. 54; Roesdahl et al. 1981, no. I20, pl. on 163; Wilson 1984, 209; Tweddle 1986b, i, 91, 232 - 4, ii, 418 - 20, iii, pl. 64b