City and County Museum, Lincoln (accession number 29.72)

Rediscovered in 1972 in a chest in the south aisle of the parish church of St Lawrence at Bardney by Mr C. N. Moore. Since the chest contained and was surrounded by architectural fragments of various dates derived from Bardney Abbey, it has been thought likely that this piece too came from the excavations there of 1909–13 (Laing 1913–14; Thompson 1913–14; Brakspear 1922).

St Lawrence

Extremely badly abraded on all surfaces

One broken arm of a cross-head, probably one of the varieties of type 9 or 10 (Cramp 1991, fig. 2). The piece is so thoroughly rounded by abrasion that no direct evidence survives to show whether it was ringed. Nevertheless the geometry of the tight curve of the armpit suggests that it could not have been. Decoration in low relief has survived only on one broad face.

A (broad): Within a plain outer border, a moulding in low relief, defined externally by an broad groove, follows the curve of the armpits and the terminal. The restricted sub-triangular field thus created is filled with a two-strand interlace pattern, which, though broken up by casual damage, is most simply read as a form of Stafford knot or triquetra (simple pattern E), linked to the centre of the cross by a twisted plait.

B–E: Other faces and edges either are abraded away or bear no sign of decoration.

F (end): Within the scar of the broken inner end of the cross-arm is one side of a hole drilled on a slant towards the centre of the head. This suggests a practical secondary use of the cross-head unrelated to its original function, perhaps in the later medieval monastery, which in turn caused the fracture.

This piece is very difficult to assess because its abraded state does not allow direct assessment of the basic matter of its cross-head form. Except for its more complex border, the decoration finds a precise parallel in the cross-head from the river Wye near Rowsley in Derbyshire, whose decoration in each arm is a similar knot that is linked to the bossed cross centre by the same length of simple plait (Routh 1937, pl. xviii). The dimensions of the Bardney fragment fit the Rowsley piece closely, i.e. it is not the small cross-head it appears. Furthermore, the geometry of the armpit would be explained by its being a volute form of type E9, like Rowsley. Routh (1937, 35–6; 1938, 38–9) assesses the Rowsley head as 'late Anglian', of later tenth- or eleventh-century date, and cites as a close local parallel the very large late cross-head at Rolleston, Staffordshire, which is ringed (Auden 1908). Further close analogies, confirming a late date, are at Peterborough Cathedral (Markham 1901, 96) and more specifically at Gunwade Ferry near Castor also in the Soke (ibid., 38–9; Irvine 1889a, 179), both of which deploy the same interlace knot without medial grooving. On the Gunwade Ferry piece is found the long approach of simple plait and the voluted cross-head of E9 type.

Further afield, comparable cross-head fragments tend to be thought of as pre-Viking in date, on style-critical or associative grounds. Of two at Bath with similarsingle-strand, medially-incised knotwork filler, one clearly carries the pattern repetitively from arm to arm while the other has a cross-head form tending to the E9 type (Cunliffe 1979, 140, nos. 5–6, pl. V, a and c; Foster, S. 1987, 51, 71–2, figs. 12b–c). The latter is traditionally known as St Aldhelm's Cross and presumed accordingly to be of eighth-century date. A fragmentary cross-head with comparable decoration on one of its broad faces found in excavations at St Mary's church, Deerhurst, though assessed by Rosemary Cramp as a small ring-head perhaps of eighth- or more likely ninth-century date, might originate in a comparable monument (Rahtz 1976, 26, fig. 14, pl. XI).

In the Wash basin, the cross-head parallels are more typically small in scale, though deploying a similarly simple knotwork pattern, and of the latest pre-Conquest date. Other Lincolnshire pieces at Lincoln St Mark (no. 1, Ills. 235–7) and Colsterworth (no. 2, Ills. 92–3) are ring-heads and share with examples in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk (Fox 1920–1, pls. I and II) the trick of carrying the interlace directly and mechanically round from the knot in one arm to its neighbours.

Like Bardney 2 and other stonework, this stone has presumably been moved to the parish church from the Benedictine abbey at TF 113705 dedicated to St Peter, St Paul and St Oswald as a result of the early twentieth-century excavations there. If it does originate from the abbey excavations as seems possible, this and Bardney 2 are the only extant pre-Conquest finds from that site. With the early monastery at Bardney assumed to have been made inoperative by Scandinavian raids and land-taking, the obvious context for the piece might appear to be mid ninth-century or earlier.

Nevertheless Bardney clearly retained an ecclesiastical importance into the tenth century as the resting place of St Oswald (transferred to Gloucester in 909) and perhaps even continuously thereafter until the refoundation of a Benedictine house in 1087 (Rollason 1978; Rogers 1979; Beech 1989; Morris 1989, 124–5, 162).It is possible that the lost fragment referred to by Fowler (1913–14, 410) and catalogued as Bardney 3 is in practice this stone.

Eleventh century(?)

Webster and Cherry 1973, 145