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Object type: Cross-shaft and part of -head [1]
Measurements: H. 82 cm (32.3 in); W. 40 > 30 < 43 cm (15.7 > 11.8 < 16.9 in); D. 24 > 15 cm (9.4 > 5.9 in)
Stone type: Pale yellowish grey (10YR 8/1–2) very shelly, oolitic limestone, with ooliths of 0.4mm, some subrounded 1mm diameter pellets, and close-packed worn shell fragments aligned parallel to face B, in a hard calcite matrix. Barnack Rag type, Upper Lincolnshire Limestone, Inferior Oolite Group
Plate numbers in printed volume: Ills.171–2,176–8
Corpus volume reference: Vol 5 p. 162-164
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The presence of the stone at this location, its traditional name and historical affinities are attested in the eighteenth century by the two pre-eminent local antiquaries, William Stukeley and Maurice Johnson of Spalding.
'Between these two parishes [sc. Moulton and Whaplode], in a green lane northwards, stands a little stone call'd Elhostone, whence the name of this hundred is deriv'd. [...] Old men tell us, here was kept in antient times an annual Court, I suppose a convention sub dio of the adjacent parts, to treat of their general affairs.' (Stukeley 1724, 22)
'The High Sheriff of this county and the King's Escheators have in ancient times held there Courts of the Tourne, for pleas of the Crown, out of the jurisdiction of the Lords' leetes throughout the south parts of Holland, and taken their Inquis' post mortem upon commission of the tenures and lands of the King's tenants here. At a place called Elloe stone, in the old way from Spalding to Whapload, where a cross stood in a Quadrivium, long disused, demolished, and gone, but there was an ancient seat and family which formerly took thence their names. This place is in records written very variously, sometimes Elloffestone, as in the most ancient town terrier of Whaplode MS. in 6 Hen. VII., A.D. 1491, it is called Elloftston. The very turning to the left hand up towards Whaplode from Moulton stocks is still called Elloe-stone-lane. In a Moulton terrier MS., made by Mr. John Mason and his fellow-jurors, 1618, it is called Ellowestone.' (Johnson in minute books of Spalding Gentlemen's Society, 1747, vol. IV, p. 123).'
When the green lane in whose broad course the stone had stood fell subsequently victim to agricultural encroachment, it remained in situ within a 'garden' said to have lain 25 feet (7.5m) from the new road edge. Before 1889, but apparently later than 1850, the stone was moved into the adjacent roadside hedge, when the 'garden' in turn was engrossed into the surrounding field (Foster 1889a, 142). It was photographed in that position in September 1905 (photograph and MS annotation in a copy of Foster 1889b in Lincoln Cathedral Library, MOU.913/159). In 1911 the stone was remounted in a modern base on the same roadside spot (Davies 1914–15, 170) with the following inscription:
The Elloe Stone. Erected in Anglo Saxon times to indicate the place of meeting of the Hundred of Elloe courts. Presented to the Moulton Parish Council by F. Dring Esq. (the owner of the field) and [m]ounted here by public subscription on June 22nd [1]911 the day of the coronation of King George [V].
In summary, the earliest direct reference to the stone appears to be in 1491. But its association with a traditional meeting place not only of the wapentake, but of royal and shrieval courts for southern Holland, probably push it back beyond the earliest documentary record of the wapentake of Elloe in Domesday Book (Anderson 1934, 62–63), at least to the tenth century.
The object which has been known as the Elloe Stone since at least 1491 is the head section of a cross-shaft. It has a rectangular collar, below which the former lower shaft is now missing. A length of tapered shaft above the collar supports the disc of the crosshead. The disc is now incomplete and is only just larger than a semicircle. Despite the severe weathering of its upper surface the presence of two ancient dowel holes suggest that the disc has been broken and repaired at some stage, and that the reduction in size of the head is not wholly the result of weathering. The truncated shaft is now reset in a modern stone base. The collar, shaft and cross-head were originally decorated with interlace in low relief. All of the angles and the borders of decorated panels are undecorated and of rectangular section.
A (north, broad): The cross-head, which now only retains decoration on this face, is laid out as though it were a fully developed ring-cross (type E8 with ring type a), but the interstices between the arms, although defined by fillets of rectangular section which form the interlace borders, were never perforated. The lower arm (and probably, originally, the other three as well) is decorated with a pair of angled loops. In the centre of the head a boss was probably defined within the intersections of the interlace but all evidence for this feature has now gone. Between the head and the collar, the shaft has a vertical run of interlace of which only two returned strands survive below an area of severe weathering or deliberate damage. The interlace here has a medial line and was probably a length of four-strand plait. The collar was originally decorated with a run of horizontal interlace. It is now not possible to ascertain the pattern as all that survives are the pair of asymmetrical loops at either end separated by a single strand. The pattern could be resolved as a six-strand plait.
B (west, narrow): The shaft is decorated with a vertical run of three-strand plait; the collar below with two closed-circuit oval loops.
C (south, broad): All surface decoration has been destroyed by weathering.
D (east, narrow): Above the collar, the shaft was originally decorated with a run of three-strand plait, now visible only with a strong oblique light. The collar is decorated with two closed-circuit oval loops within a frame which has an additional fillet.
Cross Type Although badly eroded it is quite clear that the Elloe Stone is the upper part of a large standing cross of a type well known within the area. The stone type, the collar, the characteristic undecorated borders of rectangular section, and the range of decorative motifs within them, all allow this shaft to be placed within the South Kesteven group as defined in Chapter V. It is the only Lincolnshire member of this group to retain its cross-head: it therefore gives valuable evidence for the form which this component took within this group. The cross-head here (and therefore putatively throughout the South Kesteven group as a whole) is a debased version of the type associated with shafts found further north in Kesteven and in Lindsey, for example the examples at Colsterworth 2 (Ills. 92–3) and Lincoln St Mark 1 (Ills. 235–7). The Elloe Stone head has the same pattern of decoration within the cross-head, but it is much more crudely managed than these other examples and, unlike them, the interstices are not pierced. Presumably the cross-head type associated with the South Kesteven group and exemplified by the Elloe Stone is a debased, and therefore probably later, version of an original type with a distribution in the central and northern parts of the county. A late tenth- or early eleventh-century date is argued for this group of shafts (see Chapter V).
Setting The pre-eminently interesting aspect of this cross-shaft is that it is one of the few in the county which seems to have been used for a non-sepulchral purpose. The antiquarian information about the site and the stone collected by William Stukeley and Maurice Johnson both recognises the strength of current local tradition and carries the evidence back by name to the fifteenth century. There seems no reason to doubt the clear implication that the monument has marked the hundredal meeting place since at least the reign of Henry VII. The quite unusual degree of weathering over the whole stone suggests that it has stood upright in the weather for a very considerable period. Furthermore, the fact that the (present) south face and south-west angle have weathered so much more than the other three may well suggest that it has always stood in its current orientation, i.e. with that aspect subject to the prevailing wind and weather. The presence of dowel holes in the top surface is further evidence that the shaft has been thought important enough as a marker to repair – it is the only stone in the county apart from Brattleby 1 which has revealed an ancient repair of this sort.
All of this encourages the belief that the Elloe Stone is in approximately its original position, marking not only the boundary of the parishes of Moulton and Whaplode and the deaneries of East and West Elloe, but also at a point close to the centre of Elloe wapentake, which would indeed be a suitable place for a long-established meeting place, as tradition has it. The 'quadrivium' or square space at the centre of which the cross originally stood was a small enclosure about 50 feet (approximately 15.25m) square, of which no trace remains in a much-altered landscape.
The Elloe Stone therefore belongs to a relatively small group of monuments nationally, of early medieval crosses which mark sites other than burials. By far the largest sub-group of these standing crosses are those which define boundaries. Those which marked the boundary of the territory of Crowland Abbey are nearby Lincolnshire examples (Crowland 2 and 3–7). The Elloe Stone could be seen as a member of this group as it sits on a parish and deanery boundary. But it seems that its more significant role, at least in documented times, was as the marker for a meeting place. Other hundred and wapentake names imply that their meeting place was marked by a cross, for example the wapentake of Walshcroft in Lindsey (Anderson 1934; Cameron 1992, 1): and other stone crosses either have a comparable function associated with them or warrant consideration in that light (e.g. the Cleulow Cross, Cheshire (Harris with Thacker 1987, 281, 291)). It seems, nevertheless, that the Elloe Stone is the only clear-cut surviving in situ example of such a marker dating from the Anglo-Saxon period.
It is worth emphasising that the stone used for this special purpose was not a particularly distinctive monument. Rather, it was a standard product, otherwise used mostly as a graveyard marker, with a localised distribution pattern. An alternative possibility – that the Elloe Stone was, indeed, a fragment of pre-Conquest funerary monument which was reused (either complete or in the surviving fragmentary form) to mark, embellish or authenticate/legitimate a traditional meeting place – should perhaps be recognised, though it is difficult to test. Since it would have occurred at an early date, this would itself be a significant 'iconic' gesture (Stocker with Everson 1990). A final possibility, also of great interest, is that the choice of a monument type usually associated with graveyards was made because there were indeed burials to mark. Burials (presumed to be Christian) have occasionally been found at such meeting places even when there is no church marking the site.
