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Object type: Lower part of shaft or slab, in two pieces now joined [1]
Measurements: H. 65 cm (25.6 in); W. max. 28 cm (11 in); D. 15.2 > 14 cm (6 > 5.5 in)
Stone type: Sandstone, pale brown, quartzose with feldspars, fine- to medium-grained, well-sorted, quartz cemented. Lower Coal Measures Group, Carboniferous (Local Grenoside Sandstone?) [G.L.]
Plate numbers in printed volume: Ills. 444-7; 456
Corpus volume reference: Vol 8 p. 189-90
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A slab or shaft of slab-like section. The inscription and ornament are simply incised. The lower stone, almost half the height of the surviving shaft, is rudely dressed and plain, and seems shaped as a tenon for insertion into the ground or a base.
A (broad): This face is dominated by the runic inscription in two lines at the top. Its earliest observers assumed a large section missing on the left-hand side to include more of an inscription, but although the left side has indeed been hacked away, the surviving ornament and the shaped tenon do not suggest that much is missing. The surface seems to have been cut back on a straight though sloping line above the inscription, which might imply a divider or frame. Below is an incised S-shaped scroll on its side, very crudely hacked. The surface is very roughly dressed, even above the cut-back for the tenon.
Inscription The runes are rather roughly cut across the face of the stone, in two uneven lines (Ill. 456): rune-height varies between about 5.5 and 7 cm. The reading is clear:
B (narrow): The end of a straight-line pattern, very simply incised, perhaps twist with flat strands, or possibly the end of a step-pattern.
C (broad): Two pairs of hacked incised spirals face each other, that on the right rather lower, with a crude bud springing from the join between the spirals. The effect aimed at may be of a bush-scroll.
D (narrow): This face has been hacked away.
Both the spirals, especially the plantiform spirals on face C, and the name in the inscription, suggest Anglian work, but the carving is very crude and the design simplistic. Even the angular twist on face B can be paralleled in early Anglian work, for example on the sides of a very small, finely carved cross-head with an inscription, Dewsbury 10 (Ills. 232, 234). Anglian runes and a reflection of Anglian patterns, however crude, suggest an attempt to work within this tradition, and neither crudity nor simplicity by themselves imply a very late date.
Inscription The text reads Eoh worohtæ 'Eoh made [this]'. Eoh, a poetic noun meaning 'horse', is not otherwise attested as a simplex personal name, but it probably appears as prototheme in such names as Eomer, Eomund (Ström 1939, 14–15), and would be paralleled by other animal-terms used as personal names, such as Wulf, Fis and particularly — if they are not wholly mythical — Hengest and Horsa. It is noteworthy that Eoh does not exhibit 'Anglian' smoothing to Eh (Campbell 1959, § 227 and n. 2); just possibly he was not local. The verbal worohtæ is straightforward. The insertion of a parasite vowel (the second –o–) between r (or l) and a consonant is common in relatively early manuscripts and inscriptions (Campbell 1959, § 360; Page 1999, 231). Inflectional –æ rather than –e might suggest a date before rather than after c. 900, though a single instance is not decisive (Dahl 1938, 191–4; Page 1959b, 393 [1995, 34]).
Vernacular carvers' signatures are known from other Anglo-Saxon inscriptions, including those at Great Urswick and Alnmouth (Chap. VIII, p. 84). In each of these cases the signature appears in addition to other text, and it is not unlikely that another part of the Kirkheaton stone carried a memorial inscription of some kind.
