Remounted on a modern rough stone plinth at the south side of the lane running from Cloot House to Queens Bank Farm, c. 20m west of the crossroads with the A1073 at Brotherhouse Bar

None. Although a cross in this vicinity is mentioned in the forged charters of King Wiglaf of 833 and King Eadred in the mid tenth century, the first undisputed reference to this shaft is that recorded c. 1450 as 'de Cruce apud Brothirhowse' (Birch 1881, xxxiii; see below). The stone was first reported near its present site on the causeway from Crowland to Cowbit in 1607 (Camden 1607, 399–400), although the exact location is not specified. There are numerous reports of its location 'at' or 'near' Brotherhouse in the later eighteenth century (Davies 1916–17, 28). At this date it was set on a brickwork base at the foot of the causeway (A[...] 1759, 570; Gough 1789, 236). By the mid nineteenth century it was simply set in the ground with no base or plinth (Birch 1881, frontispiece, xxxiii and note). It was later sited in the garden of the Boat Inn (TF 26031493) which was demolished in 1961/2. During the subsequent road improvements, in 1963, it was reset in its present position on a new plinth.

Good. The two surviving original faces are considerably, but evenly, weathered. The shaft is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, Lincolnshire No. 8.

The lower part of a standing shaft, probably a cross-shaft [though John Higgitt points out that that it is called petra not crux in the inscription on face A (pers. comm.)]. The stone has been smoothly recut on two faces, B (narrow) and C (broad), with a narrow chamfered arris between the two recut faces. This pattern of recutting indicates clearly that the stone has been reused as a lintel or in a plinth. It is evident however from the surviving surfaces that each face was edged originally by boldly projecting angle rolls, which flanked two quirks separated by a fillet of triangular section on the narrow faces, though only face D now gives much impression of the original form. These quirks are stopped approximately 5cm above the present base, indicating that the surviving stone represents the bottom of the shaft. A drawing of the shaft made following excavation in the 1870s by Canon Moore shows that it had a tenoned foot, which is probably still intact, though now enclosed within the modern plinth (Birch 1881, frontispiece, xxxiii and note). The upper surfaces of the shaft are greatly weathered, indicating that this stone has been detached from its fellow above for a considerable period. We cannot now be sure whether the shaft was originally a monolith, subsequently broken, or if it was of several sections joined by dowels (like Castle Bytham 2) or by stone collars.

A (broad): Within the panel flanked by the angle rolls, is an inscription in mixed capitals of at least seven lines divided by incised horizontal guide-lines. The uppermost line is now almost completely weathered away, but the letters 'AIO' were transcribed by Camden (1607, 400), and illustrated by Stukeley (1724) and by E.A. in the Gentleman's Magazine (1759). These initial letters were the subject of great debate in the late eighteenth century, being understood either as the name 'Aio', who (it was supposed) was one of the five early followers of St Guthlac (Pownall 1775; 1782), or alternatively as the expostulation 'I say' (Pegge 1779). Reading this as A + O, Davies reported the suggestion by Hamper (1820) that this was to be understood as 'Alpha and Omega' (Davies 1914–15, 140–3). John Higgitt comments that today this upper line can only be transcribed:

The lower six lines are completely legible and are transcribed as follows:

This can be edited as: –[A–] HANC PETRA(M) GVTHLACVS H(ABE)T SIBI METAM.

There is no word division, nor is there any punctuation. Further lines may be lost before the first surviving line but nothing appears to be lost at the end. The contraction mark between the H and the T probably indicates 'habet' (cf. Cappelli 1979, 165). Although Okasha (1971, 63) points out that this could be taken to read 'habuit' or 'huic, hanc', these alternatives are not very likely. It would thus be translated 'Guthlac has this stone as a boundary for himself'.

The letters are quite tall. In lines 2, 3 and 4 they are approximately 9.5 cm in height. The letters in the subsequent lines are a little shorter, approximately 8 cm in lines 5 and 6, and 7 cm in line 7. The lettering was reported to have been 're-cut' and the face of the stone 'smoothed and painted with white colour' by Edmund Webster, an apothecary, in 'about 1760', presumably to make it more legible (Gough 1783, xv). However, John Higgitt reports that the letter forms seem not to have been greatly altered in any such process.

B (narrow) and C (broad): Smoothly recut.

D (narrow): A fillet of triangular section is formed between two quirks flanking the boldly projecting angle rolls.

Appendix G item (the continuing tradition).

Recently the shaft has been dated by its calligraphy (e.g. Okasha 1971, 62–3), despite the fact that the letters are known to have been recut, which Gough thought invalidated such arguments. John Higgitt confirms the view that, although the letters may have been deepened, they preserve their original form: 'The elegant and slender capitals are quite tightly compressed. There are ligatures in lines 3 and 4. Some of the verticals are finished with modest line serifs. The capitals combine variants of standard Roman capitals with rounded forms. The rounded H and M are uncial in origin and the rounded T resembles the half uncial letter. Both square and rounded forms of M and T are used. The proportions, the treatment and the range of letter forms indicate a date in the twelfth century for the monument.'

The shaft is, however, also datable by its form. It has a slab-like section (i.e. it is very thin relative to its width) and pronounced angle rolls, which allow no decoration on the narrow sides beyond a simple fillet. These features associate it decisively with shafts such as those at Digby 1 and Revesby 1, which are assigned a twelfth-century date here. A date in the late eleventh or twelfth century would therefore seem to be indicated for this monument by its general shape and the details of its angle mouldings, as well as by its letter forms.

St Guthlac's Stone is the earliest of the shafts known to survive from the group employed to demarcate the boundary of the liberty, or territory, of Crowland Abbey (see also Crowland 3–13). These monuments, or rather monuments on these sites, are mentioned in the group of supposed early charters and other material known as the Historia Croylandensis or 'Pseudo-Ingulphus' (Fulman 1684; Riley 1854; Birch 1883). Many of these documents have long been thought to be forgeries, i.e. they were a pure post hoc invention (of perhaps around 1300) rather than transcriptions from originals by Abbot Ingulf after the fire of 1091, as the monks themselves claimed (Riley 1862; Searle 1894; Page 1906, II, 105–6; but see Roffe 1995). According to these documents ancient stone crosses had been erected by the 'first' abbot, Kenulph (presumably therefore in the eighth century), to demarcate the monastery, and these markers were also used to define the boundary of a 'sanctuary' established by a charter of King Wiglaf in 833 (Birch 1883, 67). They were replaced or re-erected by Abbot Thurketel when the monastery was 'refounded' in the mid tenth century (Riley 1854, 78; Birch 1883, 67). Special rights within the area defined by the crosses were indeed fiercely defended by the convent in the later Middle Ages, although interest in the land by this time seems to have been economic rather than spiritual or legal (Darby 1940, 86–92; Raban 1977). We should not forget, however, that the early history of Crowland by the monk Felix (Colgrave 1956; see Chapter II) makes it clear that the whole island of Crowland was 'set apart' for the monastic community in the early eighth century, even though (if we do not accept Pseudo-Ingulphus) we do not know exactly where the island's boundary lay or whether it was marked with crosses (Stocker 1993, 101–6). There is now some measure of scholarly agreement, however, that some of the island's boundaries were of considerable antiquity by c. 1300, even if there was an attempt to justify that antiquity through the production of forged charters. Exactly how ancient they might be is debatable, but David Roffe's recent work on the subject has suggested that the tradition that the lands enclosed by the later crosses belonged to Crowland went back at least to the (independently attested) tenth-century refoundation of the monastery by Thurketel (1993; 1995). If this is so, then there is a possibility, to put it no more strongly, that the sites of the crosses go back this far as well – as, indeed, the later tradition asserted.

A cross is reported by Pseudo-Ingulphus to have been standing at the Brotherhouse site in the time of Wiglaf in 833, which was renewed by Abbot Thurketel in the mid tenth century (Riley 1854, 35–40, 65–72, 84–8). Apart from the mention in the forged refoundation charter, the earliest reference to it by the name 'Guthlac's Cross' however is as late as c. 1450 (ibid., 414), but it was evidently already old by then. Like several of the other Crowland boundary cross sites (nos. 3–7), it still stands on the medieval parish boundary between the parish of Crowland and what is now the parish of Cowbit (a chapelry of Spalding Abbey until the later Middle Ages). It sits at the point where the road from Crowland to Spalding crosses the 'Asendyke', which was considered to mark the northern boundary of the island of Crowland by 1142 at the latest, when it was clearly established by the monks of Crowland as the limit of their 'precinct' (Page 1906, II, 107 and n. 2). The Asendyke, however, probably represents a much older boundary line, perhaps even one between middle Saxon tribal groupings (Roffe 1993). Although the present cross is clearly twelfth century in date, then, it marks a credible location for a boundary cross of much earlier date and, if we take the more charitable view of Pseudo-Ingulphus proposed by Roffe, the present shaft may well be the most recent of a succession of earlier boundary markers on this site.

The need for a marker on this site will have become particularly acute during the Abbey's chronic disputes over commoning rights with the men of Spalding, like those starting in 1189 (Darby 1940, 86–92; Hayes and Lane 1992, 192–204). This 1189 dispute might itself have offered a context for the erection of the surviving cross, but a late twelfth-century date is towards the end of the date bracket we would wish to assign to the stone on grounds of form and calligraphy alone. It may be preferable, instead, to see the surviving monument as part of the great phase of refurbishment undertaken at Crowland between 1113 and 1136 (Gough 1783, 32–50). In particular Abbot Geoffrey (1110–24) is credited with redefining the island boundary by recutting dykes – including, presumably, the Asendyke (Gough 1784, App. II, 236–7) – and it may be that he erected new boundary crosses as part of the same scheme of works. If this is correct, St Guthlac's Stone just predates the earliest independent evidence for the demarcation of the island in 1142. The recutting evident on faces B and C, however, suggests that the stone was not in use as a boundary marker for the whole period between the twelfth and the twentieth centuries. It may, for example, have been reused as building stone at some period between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries.

Camden 1607, 399–400; Gibson 1695, col. 462; Stukeley 1724, 32, fig. facing 12; A[...] 1759, 570–1 and fig.; Pownall 1775, 96–100, fig. on 96; Stukeley 1776, I, 34, pl. 11; Pegge 1779, 101–5, pl. VI; Pownall 1782, 395–9, pl. LVI; Gough 1780, I, 526; Gough 1783, xiii–xvi, 11–12 fn., fig. facing xvi; Gough 1789, II, 224, 236–7 and fig., pl. X; Astle 1800, 214; Gough 1806, II, 332, 343?4 and fig., pl. XIII facing 401; Britton 1807, 6 (I, N6); Holdich 1816, 52–3; Hamper 1820; Allen, T. 1834, I, 298; Tomlinson 1839, 17–18; Riley 1854, 414; Gresley 1856, 3, fig. facing 8; Hübner 1876, 63, 90, no. 171, fig. on 63; Miller and Skertchly 1878, 76–7, fig. 10; Birch 1879, 393–4, figs. 1 and 2; Birch 1881, xxxii–xxxiv, frontispiece; Birch 1883, 67; Allen and Browne 1885, 356; Canham 1890, 124, pl. I; Canham 1892–4, 247 and fig. on 246; Searle 1894, 69; Davies 1914–15, 140–3; Davies 1916–17, 22–31, 55–6; Howarth 1917, viii, fig. facing 298; Cox 1924, 107; Pevsner and Harris 1964, 26, 501; Okasha 1971, 62?3, pl. 26; Fell 1978, 4; Kaye 1984, 13; Pevsner et al. 1989, 235; Stocker with Everson 1990, 88; Roffe 1993, 86; Stocker 1993, 103