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Object type: Part of grave-marker
Measurements: L. 25 cm (9.8 in) W. 25 cm (9.8 in) D. Built in
Stone type: [Inaccessible but possibly Ancaster Freestone type]
Plate numbers in printed volume: Ill. 401
Corpus volume reference: Vol 5 p. 276
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A small fragment from a marker decorated with at least three incised crosses. Only one face is visible.
A (broad): The fragment retains a division into two registers. One had a row of touching circles with double borders retaining cross pattées (the evidence for two of which is preserved). The other register retains evidence for a single cross within a circular border of an incised line. This cross is of type E8, with a boss.
Appendix A item (stones dating from Saxo-Norman overlap period or of uncertain date).
This fragment belongs to a group of markers decorated with an arrangement of several crosses, which includes the Lincolnshire examples at Careby, Grantham, Scredington, North Rauceby and St Peter-at-Gowts, Lincoln (see Chapter V and Appendix F [separate PDF], and also Trollope 1853). The Careby, Grantham, North Rauceby and Scredington examples all have (or had) cross pattées confined within circles. Outside the county there is a good example at Barnack, which, like Bracebridge 2, combines cross pattées with cross type E8. The Barnack example is made of the Barnack stone, but several of the other examples in the group are made of Ancaster stone types, like this example at Bracebridge. It seems, then, that there were several centres of production of these markers with multiple crosses.
The cross pattée form used in nearly all of the known examples of this marker type suggests a date in the late eleventh or twelfth centuries, despite its occurrence, here at Bracebridge, alongside crosses of type E8.
The suggestion made by Archdeacon Trollope (1853, 63), that these markers were multiple memorials to husband and wife or to groups of children, seems reasonable.
