Bath Abbey Heritage Vaults, mounted in brackets (A 41C '93 [25])

Found in excavations by R. Bell south of the abbey in 1993, together with Bath 10 and a group of late Saxon burials cut by the cloister wall. Both fragments had been reused as part of a twelfth-century cist, Bath 7 forming the end of the head niche, and Bath 10 placed upside down as a capping stone (pers. comm. Robert Bell; Bell 1996, 15).

Cut for reuse, surface damaged and weathered

Only the upper face is carved. The piece is coped, and divided at the centre by a double moulding with tiny indented triangles in between. Clipped to this central ridge by pairs of rounded 'clips' are volutes of plant-scroll, only one of which is complete. Within each volute are three large curling leaves; single or double small pellets fill the spaces around the leaves.

Although reused, this cover is reasonably considered to be a monument from the Saxon cemetery, which has provided radiocarbon dates of the ninth to tenth century. This type of coped grave-cover has quite a wide distribution in the south-west (see introduction p. 32), and in this region is to be found at Wells (no. 1, Ill. 327) with a close relation at St Oswald's, Gloucester (West 1984b, 43, ill. 24), but the organisation and detail of the plant-scrolls are different. Here the swirling acanthus leaves with lobed tips, the paired clips (which Plunkett called 'domed brackets' (1984, I, 210); see introduction p. 51), and the loose pellets are very like the lower Todber shaft (Ills. 110–13), whilst the distinctive 'clips' are also found attaching plants (of a different type) at Iron Acton, Gloucestershire (Plunkett 1984, II, pl. 86) and Nunney (Ill. 316). This seems then to be a local variant of a more generalised form of grave monument. Its carving is crisp and confident and when complete it must have been a striking piece, marking an important grave.

Later tenth century

Bell 1996, 15, fig. 3; Davenport 1996, 30; Nenk et al. 1996, 239; Davenport 2002, 52, 58, 65, ill. 17

None