On top of a plain grave-cover against the north wall of the nave in St Nicholas's church, West Tanfield (SE 268787)

Found amongst the ruins known as the Hermitage in Magdalen Field within Tanfield Wood to the west of the village (McCall 1910, 187). When seen by Collingwood in September 1910 it was on the garden wall of Stubbings Farm. Subsequently moved to the church in the village. The earthworks known as the Hermitage are about two miles west of St Nicholas's church on a promontory called Magdalen Field, flanked on three sides by the river Ure, and defined to the east by a bank and ditch. Surveys by Allcroft (1908, 447–9, fig. 152) and the Ordnance Survey Archaeology Division in 1962 (N.M.R., SE 27 NW 8) show the remains of an internal bank enclosing the foundations of buildings to the north. The site was partly excavated by the Rev. W. Lukis in the nineteenth century; early medieval foundations and the remains of a chapel were discovered (Macquoid 1883, 226). Collingwood 'suggested that the sculpture came from a lost Anglian church site (1911, 301); Bogg in 1925 identified the Hermitage site as a pre-Conquest monastery (1925, 74). The topography closely resembles other early monastic sites such as Old Melrose (Thomas 1971, 35, fig. 11; Morris, R. 1989, 111). D.C.

Dressed on two faces, broken on top and cut at the base; very worn

A (broad) : The outer roll of the double edge moulding is damaged. The more slender inner moulding is modelled and divides the face into frames, since it is continued axially upwards at the centre. Two adjacent panels, lost at the top, each contain a single profile animal in mirror image. Each is loosely interlaced by a well-modelled circular stem which may be a body extension from the animal. The roundel on the left-hand beast passes under the wing and over the loins. The creatures are winged quadrupeds, slightly rearing, with the wing stretched upwards diagonally. Both the torso and the legs taper elegantly. The heads face inwards and forwards and bite at the circling stem.

A narrow horizontal moulding separates them from carving below, which is now lost.

B (narrow) : Dressed.

C (broad) : Dressed, but there are remains of a narrow edge moulding adjacent to face B.

D (narrow) : The edge moulding is worn and broken. Portions of two panels remain, separated by a narrow transverse moulding, much worn. The upper panel contains a single profile animal, its head lost, facing left. The torso and legs taper in the manner of face A's beasts. The foreparts are now lost but Collingwood's drawing shows prancing forelegs and a loop around one leg. Below the transverse moulding is part of a volute crest. This face is very worn and much damaged.

The fragment appears to have had sculpture both above and below it: it is not the base of a shaft, and consequently it must have been a monument of considerable size. A width of 20 inches is unusual. The taste for individual animals within panels, and the interlacing circular strand, is also seen on the Cundall/ Aldborough shaft (Ills. 160–84) which is very probably by the same hand (Chap. VI, p. 41). The tapering torsos and limbs are as much a feature of Mercian creatures in the early ninth century as of prestigious monuments in Yorkshire. Masham 1 (Ills. 625–31) and shafts at Ilkley in the West Riding (Collingwood 1915, 186–92) provide parallels in Yorkshire sculpture, though the type's popularity stretched from the Gandersheim casket to the Thornhill shaft in Dumfriesshire (Webster and Backhouse 1991, cat. 138; Collingwood 1927a, fig. 68). The winged quadruped is something of a rarity amongst the usual bipeds, the only parallel being on Croft 1 (Ill. 152). The 'encircled beast' motif of this piece is an indication of the sculptor of Cundall/Aldborough, the Uredale master (Chap. VI, p. 42), and the transition from inhabited plant-scroll to scrolled body extensions is a feature of Yorkshire's ninth-century sculpture, both in the Ripon area and on the archbishop's estate in Wharfedale.

First half of ninth century

McCall 1910, 187; Collingwood 1911, 299–300, figs. a–b on 300; Collingwood 1912, 111, 127; Collingwood 1915, 275; Brøndsted 1924, 58; Collingwood 1927a, 43, 109, fig. 56a–b; Morris, J. 1931, 418; Collingwood 1932, 50; Elgee and Elgee 1933, 195, 251; Pevsner 1966, 385; Jewell 1986, 101

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