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Object type: Part of coped or round-topped grave-cover(?)[1]
Measurements: L. 134 cm (52.75 in) W. > 49 cm ( > 19.25 in) D. 16 cm (6.25 in)
Stone type: Greyish yellow (10YR 8/3) shelly oolitic limestone; mostly lichen-covered, but in a few places shows closely packed ooliths (0.4 to 0.6mm) and worn shell fragments in a hard crystalline calcite matrix. Upper Lincolnshire Limestone, Inferior Oolite Group, could be Barnack Rag type
Plate numbers in printed volume: Ill. 304
Corpus volume reference: Vol 5 p. 232-233
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This appears to be a substantial part, even perhaps the whole, of a coped or round-topped grave-cover. For its secondary use, its upper surface has been trimmed to a plane surface, one long side has been recut to a vertical, and either end has been shaped to fit the outline of the door jambs. As a result only a narrow strip of original decoration survives, some 9–11cm wide. It occupies a surface rising from the stone's edge at an angle (?over-)estimated by Penny (1894–5b) as being 36 degrees, and takes the form of the edge of a run of three- or four-strand interlace in which the apices of the eighteen loops that can be counted are spaced at approximately every 7cm. The run appears to be complete at both surviving ends. No decoration or defined border is discernible in the space of approximately 3.25cm between the edge of the interlace and the edge of the stone.
Too little survives of the decorative scheme of this monument to be certain of its original form. The most obvious suggestion is that it may have been a coped grave-cover with a cross-stem occupying its ridge and runs of plait filling the long flanking fields. Flat covers of this decorative type are more commonly found in Lincoln (Lincoln Cathedral 1, Ill. 230) and in the south of the county (Ewerby 1, Market Deeping 2, Whaplode 1 and 3: Ills. 170, 288, 385, 387) than in Lindsey, where Broughton 2 may provide the best analogy (Ill. 68). The coped cover at Thoresway 1 (Appendix B) is described as having decoration of this sort, though if it existed it can no longer be made out. The stone type anyway points clearly to an origin in south Lincolnshire and to likely analogies among Barnack products. Generally coped covers in the county appear slightly later than their flat equivalents: at St Mark's in Lincoln the series of large plain coped covers dates from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries from their excavated context, and decorated examples certainly to the later twelfth.
However, this analysis does not take account of two features of this stone. In section, though battered it appears slightly curved or round-topped rather than angularly coped; and in the run of decoration there is no sign of a cross-arm emerging to the panel's edge. In respect of the former feature, the cover might therefore have resembled the monument at Harston, Leicestershire, which additionally has blanket interlace. The absence of a cross, too, is reminiscent of the hogback tradition, which typically has no cross in the decorative schemes but has examples where runs of interlace replace the more normal tegulation on pitched or curved upper surfaces. A further possibility is that the stone, far from being almost complete in length, is only the central section from a very large cover in the Barnack/Cambridgeshire tradition of Fox's type 6 (Fox 1920–1, pl. V) or something similar (cf. Chapter V and Table 5).
The best-preserved example, from Cambridge Castle (Kerrich 1814, pl. XV; see Ill. 486), had cross pattées at both ends – here presumed to have been removed in reuse – and continuous runs of interlace flanking an axial shaft that present fifteen loops including return terminals very like the pattern of Mavis Enderby 1. The absence of a defined border and the stone type are more in sympathy with this suggestion than any other. The context of the Cambridge Castle discoveries would guarantee an eleventh-century date.
But the best parallel is probably the coped Barnack cover at Redmile, Leicestershire, with a bold spinal roll and flanking fields of interlace, which if sheared off would look like the disfigured Mavis Enderby piece.
