Volume 5: Lincolnshire

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Current Display: Westborough 01, Lincolnshire Forward button Back button
Overview
Present Location

Loose in south aisle

Evidence for Discovery

None. The stone might have come to light during the substantial eighteenth-century works at this church (Pevsner and Harris 1964, 707).

Church Dedication
All Saints
Present Condition

Badly weathered

Description

Solid disc-shaped cross-head decorated on both faces in low relief. The decoration on faces A and C is the same: a type B6 cross (with only very slightly tapered arms) of segmental section, set within a circular field defined by a moulded border, which was originally of sub-semicircular section. The cross-head retains the stub of the stem to which it was fixed, but no indication of the section or profile that it took. The stem of the cross itself did not extend into the shaft of the monument – the cross was clearly equal-armed and confined within the head. Parts of the border moulding on both faces appear to have been deliberately broken away.

Discussion

Appendix G item (the continuing tradition).

This cross-head originally came either from a small cross-shaft or from a large shouldered grave-marker. The scale suggests that the size of the complete monument was considerably larger than the shouldered markers at Beelsby and Cabourne, but the cross would look small on top of a late shaft of the same scale as Digby 1 or Castle Bytham 2. The only parallel for the form of the cross-head itself in the county is that on the marker at North Rauceby (no. 3, Ills. 420, 423) which is only eleven miles east and of a similar stone, although that monument is smaller than that represented here and it is a double marker, which Westborough certainly is not. Similar cross-head types are, however, quite common nationally. There are examples at Bakewell, Derbyshire (Routh 1937) and Adel, Yorkshire WR ((—) 1864b, 63–4; Lewthwaite 1867–8). Like North Rauceby, Westborough can be dated on its cross-head type to the later eleventh or early twelfth century.

Date
Late eleventh or early twelfth century
References

Unpublished

Endnotes

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