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Object type: Incomplete cross, in two pieces
Measurements:
a: L. 64.5 cm (25.5 in) W. Shaft tapers 30 > 27 cm (11.75 > 10.5 in) Approximate diameter of cross-head 51 cm (20 in) D. Built in
b: L. 23 cm (9 in) W. 12 cm (4.75 in) D. Built in
Stone type: [Now inaccessible; recorded in 1980 as Barnack Rag type, Upper Lincolnshire Limestone, Inferior Oolite Group]
Plate numbers in printed volume: Fig. 28;Ills. 265–6
Corpus volume reference: Vol 5 p. 211-212
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Two non-conjoined pieces of the same monument.
Stone 1a seems to be part of the slightly tapering shaft and head of a small cross or disc-headed grave-marker, decorated in low relief on the only visible face.
A (broad): The shaft has a single vertical panel filled with a run of interlace comprising one register of simple pattern F and part of another. This has a narrow plain border that closes across the top of the panel in sympathy with the curve of the head. A plain outer border continues unbroken to form the border of the head. The shape of this head is uncertain. There are traces of a worn central boss, but the indistinct knotwork looks ill-organised and irregular in a way that would be difficult to accommodate within cross-arms or to resolve into repetitive geometrical shapes around the boss. There may be a possibility therefore that the head was a disc, although a conventional type E8 with a ring type (a) should not be ruled out.
Stone 1b contains the fringe of the corner of a panel of interlace, whose pattern is unrecoverable. It has the same plain inner and outer borders as 1a.
Their decoration and identical stone type argue that these are two fragments of the same monument, but their relationship is unclear. The monument, too, is difficult to define accurately because of its damaged and worn state. In general it belongs to a recognisable group of shafts of south Lincolnshire provenance. Its wider analogies seem to lie with the small free-standing crosses of the Cambridge region discussed by Fox (1920–1, 15–19, pls. I–II). They too have short, broad and slightly tapering shafts, with single interlace-filled panels on both broad faces; at Cambridge Castle and Stapleford (both Cambridgeshire) there is a double border. Their heads tend to be unpierced discs, albeit with well-articulated crosses: the examples at Cambridge Castle and Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire, and Whissonsett, Norfolk, have central bosses. The interlace on the shaft, however, is of a common Lincolnshire pattern, found for example in comparable use on the Brattleby 1 cross-shaft (Ills. 64, 67) and on several covers of the mid-Kesteven type; and the panel is deliberately divided off from the decoration on the head, as found at Lincoln St Mark 1 (Ills. 235–7) and Colsterworth 2 (Ills. 92–3) but in contrast to the Cambridge group.
The location of secondary use of these pieces in an eleventh-century architectural feature is important in giving an archaeological context that is the equivalent of the material from Cambridge Castle. This may have been a monument in the graveyard of the stone church represented by the west wall of the nave, that was cleared to enable the tower to be added (Taylor and Taylor 1965, 391–4).
