Loose against second pier of south arcade in the parish church of St Lawrence at Bardney (NGR. TF 119693)

From its form and dimensions, this is clearly the cross-base revealed in excavations of 1909–13 at Bardney Abbey. The principal publication of that work notes that in the row of post-settings supporting the first floor of the west cloistral range of the post-Conquest abbey, 'the southernmost block was the base-stone of a Saxon cross re-used' (Brakspear 1922, 46–7).

St Peter, St Paul and St Oswald

Weathered and abraded

In plan the stone has the appearance of a stubby-armed cross of type A1, from which one arm has been removed. The projection on face B that gives this form protrudes only 12 cm (5 in) but is 38 cm (15 in) broad.

A (top): Decorated with a shallow plain roll moulding on the upper arris of the two narrow faces (C and E), that is badly damaged in the same way on both sides near the corners of face D. On the side with the oblong projection (B), the roll turns away from the arris and mirrors the projection leaving a return of a few centimetres. It has been removed to one side of the projection where the stone is recut as a simple chamfer. On the opposite side (D) there is no trace of the roll or a matching projection. Within the centre of face A is a neatly cut mortice measuring 43 cm (17 in) by 31 cm (12 in) and 10 cm (4 in) deep. Recut centrally within that is a smaller shallow socket, approximately 12 cm (5 in) by 11.5 cm (4.5 in), filled with lead.

B (long): There is criss-cross tooling, or 'diamond broaching', of a Roman type (cf. Blagg 1976; Hill 1981) well preserved on the face of the projection.

C and E (narrow) and D (long): Abraded, D especially badly.

F (bottom): The underside has deliberate chamfering along one arris and a central V-shaped groove.

Like Bardney 1 and other stonework, this base has evidently been moved to the parish church from the Benedictine abbey as a result of the early twentieth-century excavations. Brakspear (1922, 46–7) described the cross-base found at Bardney Abbey as 'not square in plan. It had a projecting square member on one side and doubtless had a corresponding block on the opposite face which had been cut off. The edges were roughly moulded, and there was a mortice 16 inches by 12 inches in the middle for the shaft of the cross. The stone was set bottom upwards, and a new mortice hole had been made to take the wooden post in its reused position.'

The surface condition of the relevant side (D) makes it entirely possible that a projection has been removed, as presumed by Brakspear, but its form is of course uncertain. No clear pre-Conquest parallel has been found for such distinctive projecting members. They may have functioned to give the monument additional stability, but a cruciform plan is likely to have been of as much or greater importance. The cross-sectional dimensions of the shaft given by the mortice imply a major rectangular shaft, comparable locally, for example, with that from Brattleby (no. 1, Ills. 60–4, 66–7).

The cross-base's surface decoration is not sufficiently distinctive to indicate a clear-cut date. A terminus ante quem is given by the evidence of the stone's reuse as an original feature in a building assigned a mid twelfth-century date; this at least favours a pre-Conquest origin. Although Bardney 1 indicates continuing erection of funerary monuments on the site in the later pre-Conquest period, the base's relatively elaborate form and restrained and complementary decoration may favour an earlier rather than later date, during the period of Mercian royal patronage of the pre-Viking monastery (Chapter II). The strongest support for this comes in the distinctive tooling of Roman type on side B, indicating either reuse of Roman stone or deployment of Roman masonry skills that are likely to have been available in the early years of the monastery rather than later. But the example of reused Roman masonry for the tenth-century grave-marker, Lincoln Cathedral 2 (Ills. 232–4), makes this less than a decisive argument.

Pre-Conquest, perhaps seventh-century

Brakspear 1922, 46–7