Select a site alphabetically from the choices shown in the box below. Alternatively, browse sculptural examples using the Forward/Back buttons.
Chapters for this volume, along with copies of original in-text images, are available here.
Object type: Alleged cross-shaft
Measurements: Not recorded
Stone type: Not recorded
Plate numbers in printed volume: N/a
Corpus volume reference: Vol 5 p. 298
(There may be more views or larger images available for this item. Click on the thumbnail image to view.)
Crowder (1928, 15) reports that until the early nineteenth century an early cross-shaft stood on the top of the King's Hill at Bardney. No further details are available.
Appendix C item (lost stones for which no illustration has survived).
The earthen mound known as the King's Hill has been identified by local tradition as the burial mound of King Æthelred of Mercia, who retired to Bardney Abbey at the end of the seventh century, first as monk and later as its abbot (Crowder 1928, 15). He died at Bardney in 716. A recent reassessment of the mound, however, suggests that it was rather a rabbit warren of later medieval date (White 1983). Marrat's early nineteenth-century description of the mound, which White identifies as the source of the local tradition, makes no reference to a cross, even though it would presumably have lent colour to his text (1816, 133). On this evidence, even the presence of a cross is in doubt: its possible date is beyond assessment.
