In a display area at the east end of the south aisle

Major restorations of this church were carried out in 1851 and 1867, and it is presumed that the majority of the pre-Conquest pieces from this site were recovered at these times. The discovery of 'fragments of Saxon pillars' used as fillings in the 'spaces between the inner and outer walls' is mentioned in Cobley (1882, 50). He also says that 'among these were the fragments of stocks of three crosses, two of which are beautifully carved'. A guidebook for travellers in Yorkshire describes fragments at the end of the nave, which had been found in the 1867 restoration: Otley (All Saints) 1 and 2 are clearly described in this account ((–––) 1882a, 379), which also has a reference to some fragments of window balusters 'resembling those found at Jarsow' (?Jarrow); but Roman stones, including an altar, were also found in the church walls.

All Saints

Three fragments of a major monument. The angles on the lowest section (c) are considerably abraded and at this point the shaft is slightly incomplete in width on all faces. Fragment 1b has traces of carving on only three faces. Nevertheless a consistency in style and iconography on all faces strongly supports the view that these are fragments of one cross.

A cross-shaft with rounded angles, where these survive, in a high-relief modelled style, panelled on both broad faces.

A (broad): Within the edge mouldings each panel is edged by a narrow roll moulding and the panel dividers are also rolled. Where the panel dividers have survived, it can be seen that there were also plain recessed flat areas between panels, presumably for painted inscriptions. The three panels in the upper fragment 1a have half-length figures recessed under arches on columns with stepped capitals. In the two complete examples, plant forms with short rounded flowers or berry bunches on slender, deeply-modelled stems spring from the capitals to fill the spandrels of the arch. (i) The upper panel is incomplete at the top. It contains the lower part of a half-length human figure, robed and holding a book in his draped right hand. The columns rise on either side to the level of the stepped imposts. The figure's possibly bearded head is turned towards his right. He wears an undergarment with V neck, and an overgarment which has two or three narrow edge-folds over his shoulders. This drapes over his left arm in a series of U- or V-shaped folds. Inverted V folds drape over the hand carrying the book. (ii) In the central panel, the monumentality of the figural style and the depth of the carving can be appreciated. The half-length figure's head is turned towards his left. He too holds a book in his right hand, though in this case the hand is below the picture frame. He has a short, close-fitting hair style and his probably beardless features are modelled, but only shallowly. His undergarment has a round neck with an incised border, the overgarment is draped as in panel Ai above. (iii) The figure here is again turned towards his right, but the features are more blurred than in the panel above. The book appears on the figure's left as though carried in the left hand. He again has a close-fitting hairstyle. The neck of his undergarment is not clear, but the overgarment has five very fine folds over his right shoulder, and traces of similar folds on the left. (iv) The second fragment 1b is very damaged but has the clear remains of the inscription area and panel dividers between two panels. In the upper panel there are remains suggesting folds of drapery over a hand or shoulder. (v) The lower fragment 1c is badly damaged but the battered edge moulding appears on the left. The space is filled by a frontal figure, of which the delicately curved and undercut folds of part of the drapery survive on the lower right. Near the top left is a wing with incised feathers, more shallowly carved to show it is rising above and behind the figure's right shoulder. It seems undoubted that this is the remains of a frontal standing angel. The head of a second figure appears below on the left, as of a figure kneeling at the angel's feet. He has finely modelled features in three-quarter profile, and his right ear is visible under an apparently tonsured, or at least cap-like, hairstyle. He has a robe with a hood or cowl standing up behind his head. This scene is incomplete at top and bottom.

B (narrow): Nothing now remains on fragment 1b, but 1a and 1c are consistent with a continuous interlaced medallion plant-scroll, deeply cut with rounded fleshy stems. On fragment 1a, there survive two complete medallions, the upper with its interlaced stems top and bottom; and below, another, shorter example, almost complete except for some damage on the left side. The plant forms within each medallion spring from bifurcating elements of the stems which form the medallion below. In the upper medallion, these subsidiary stems and their terminating long pointed leaves echo the outer enclosing form, one half-hidden behind the other, and both also throw off a slender bud or oval leaf. In the lower medallion, the two internal stems terminate in cups holding round heavy berry bunches, and each has a subsidiary bud. Round flowers or seed pods spring from short stems to fill the spandrels between medallions, surviving better on the left than on the right. The nodes from which the stems of the upper medallion spring appear to be ridged with fine horizontal incisions, and the stems emerge from bud-like swellings. On fragment 1c, lower on the shaft, the medallion is again shorter. It is incomplete at the top. The crossing stems at the base of the medallion survive, but there seems to be damage to the bottom and left side of the fragment greater than when drawn by Collingwood (1915a, 225, fig. i), such that a pointed leaf in the spandrel to the left below the medallion now only partly survives, and lacing stems below are now completely missing. There is only one subsidiary stem within the medallion, terminating in a round fruit or flower similar to the forms in the spandrels of fragment 1a. The bifurcation for the medallion above can be clearly seen on the stem to the right. Both enclosing stems have narrow buds lying close to their inner edges. This medallion must be close to the root of the scroll, or else the pattern changed below this fragment. The implication of the surviving layout is of a scroll which developed into longer and more slender medallions as it rose up the side of the shaft.

C (broad): The face has been more badly damaged than A, but was clearly panelled, each panel apparently taking the form of one element of a medallion plant-scroll as a frame, on the evidence of panel Ci, for a figure. (i) The upper panel on fragment 1a is incomplete at the top but clearly shows two fleshy plant stems, each starting about a quarter of the way in on the lower frame of the panel and rising to enclose, mandorla-like, a damaged but almost complete half-figure. The plant-scroll origins of the inner frame are clearly demonstrated by the buds which fill the lower spandrels, and there are surviving traces of the stems crossing and bifurcating as if to form another medallion at the top. The figure is quarter-turned to his left, and wears a robe with stylised but modelled folds shown as if lying over the shoulders on left and right, and with a narrow edge fold over the shoulders. His draped left hand rests on his breast and appears to hold a narrow object, its head just above the hand and possibly, though not certainly, a small cross. Most details of the face and head apart from the outline have been destroyed, although there seems to be clear evidence of a nimbus. The features above his shoulders are clearly wing tips: that on the left has diagonal feathers. Below the panel is a broad plain area with rolled borders on all edges, large enough for a painted inscription, as on face A. (ii) The next panel is incomplete except for the upper termination, which shows the crossing and bifurcating stems from the medallion-niche in the panel terminating in paired leaves, with between them a slender stem terminating in one large round fruit or flower head (this can be seen most clearly on the right). Paired or triple buds also spring from the stem frame below this fruit on the right: the left is too damaged to show any such feature there. Within the medallion-niche, only the round top of presumably the head of a figure survives. (iii) The second fragment 1b shows the remains of another broad plain panel with borders identical to that on panel Ci. (iv) The lower fragment 1c has the top of another medallion-niche, with the medallion element terminating in large sheathed leaf- flowers or seed- pods, and there are other short and slender buds at points on the stem. The surviving upper part of the inside of the medallion has been hacked away.

D (narrow): Fragment 1a survives in rather good condition. Taken together with 1b and 1c below, it is clear that the whole face had a continuous inhabited plant-scroll with a strong sinuous stem and ridged nodes, of which five complete volutes survive. The inner vertical roll mouldings of the face survive only on 1a. The scrolls terminate in leaves, buds, or in one case a berry bunch; while tendrils, some hooked and tangled with the main stems, develop from the volutes to terminate in leaves, buds or leaf-flowers in the spandrels. The two upper volutes on fragment 1a have birds facing left and pecking fruit: the upper has a tail which passes in front of the curl of the volute band, while the tendril on which it pecks at a bud continues behind it to emerge as a curling tendril in the spandrel below; the lower bird has an exaggeratedly down-bent head which pecks at a round berry bunch at the end of one of two interlinked tendrils. Tail and wing feathers are lightly indicated. The lowest complete volute on 1a has a small left-facing quadruped eating a fruit. Fragment 1b below also has a quadruped leaping upwards, its head now missing, and 1c in its one complete volute has a bird facing left, its wing feathers particularly clear.

It is not too much to say that this is one of the finest monuments surviving from pre-Viking Northumbria, and its importance as an indication of the sources of a particular phase of Anglian art, and as a source of influence for succeeding schools of sculpture in its own right, have been recognised by scholars in the subject area, certainly from Collingwood (1915a) onwards, but also increasingly over the last four decades since the seminal paper by Rosemary Cramp (1970).

Cramp discussed the plant-scrolls on this cross in detail. Of the animals in the inhabited scroll and their disposition, on face D, she was most concerned to show how (whether or not the ultimate origin was eastern, perhaps through a western model) they had been thoroughly assimilated into the repertoire of English, particularly Northumbrian art, while at the same time acknowledging the difference between Otley's apparent artlessness and the more mechanical alternate-facing of the creatures in the Bewcastle and Ruthwell scrolls (Cramp 1970, 56–7). She also pointed out the resemblance to the inhabited scroll on Easby 1C, north Yorkshire: the resemblance between the birds with down-bent heads, though facing in opposite directions, is particularly marked (Lang 2001, ill. 199). Although the carving at Easby appears shallower, and the scroll (perhaps because on one of the wider faces) is more complex, the similarities may well have been more marked originally: this side of the Otley cross is the most worn. The medallion scroll on face B is also notable for its deep cutting, and here Bewcastle is the closest English parallel, not only in cutting but in disposition of the elements, especially on Bewcastle 1B, in the complicated crossing at the base of the medallion and the way in which the stiff-stalked plants within the medallion arise from this complexity (Bailey and Cramp 1988, ill. 100). Again, Otley is the simpler of the examples.

The medallion scroll on face C is the most extraordinary but also the most puzzling. Collingwood (1915a, 225–6, fig. a) thought the figure enclosed in the one complete medallion (Ci) was possibly 'a winged wyvern with its head bent down to the ground on the dexter side'. Cramp (1970, 58) was confident, as am I, that it was a half-figure, in fact the bust of an angel. The element over the figure's left shoulder could indeed be the tip of a wing. At least one other medallion certainly enclosed a figure. The broad framed panels on face C, probably for an inscription, suggests this side held figures which it was important to name. A medallion scroll enclosing busts or half-figures in this way is unprecedented in Anglo-Saxon art, but breaking up a medallion scroll into individual framing elements is found on the Bewcastle cross, notably on face D, panel vii (Bailey and Cramp 1988, ills. 93, 107). There, however, the medallion encloses large, wing-like leaf-flowers. Another link with Bewcastle is in the sheathed leaf-flowers or seed pods in the lowest medallion Civ — compare Bewcastle faces B and D (ibid., ills. 99–100, 102). This motif is found in the eighth-century St Petersburg [Leningrad] Bede, fols. 3c, 16v (Alexander 1978, 47–8, cat. 19, ills. 83–4). It is also found on a late eighth-century panel at Jarrow, co. Durham (Cramp 1984, 115, no. 20, pl. 98.525), and in varying styles in the west of northern Yorkshire on Crayke 1, Masham 5, and Northallerton 2 (Lang 2001, ills. 145, 636, 665). For Bewcastle, Cramp sought a source in near-Eastern wood carvings and textiles (Bailey and Cramp 1988, 20), while acknowledging that such exotic plants could have arrived in England through a number of intermediary art forms from southern Gaul or Italy. The important point here, however, is that all the Otley links are with Bewcastle and Jarrow in Bernicia, but not with Hexham, and with sculptures in the western part of north Yorkshire, but not with York or the eastern half of Yorkshire (or indeed with the southern parts of Yorkshire). On the other hand, saints in arcades in which the pillars sprout plant forms, and figures entangled in plant-scrolls, which have quite a different meaning, are relatively common — but none of them are angels. Lang (1993, 264) linked face C to the same north Italian antique sources as face A (see below), pointing to a Roman pillar at Murano with a plant-scroll which forms two medallions containing portrait heads (Perry 1987, 42–3, pl. 28), which was reused in the eighth or ninth century.

The side which has attracted the most interest is face A, discussed by most commentators on this cross but explored particularly by James Lang in a series of important articles (1993; 1999; 2000). Part of his thesis in relation to this piece was the identification of a particular phase of revived classicism in Anglian art, particularly in Deira. Lang (1993, 262) linked this firmly with York's seeking of metropolitan status at the very end of the eighth century, and its actual international status and connections exemplified in the presence of Alcuin at the Carolingian court, and in his surviving letters to, for example, Pope Leo III, Offa king of Mercia, and Archbishop Eanbald II of York. Lang saw the half-profile busts on face A as exhibiting features so 'purely antique' that they must imply a deliberate seeking out of indubitably classical models. In default of any actual surviving examples close enough in style from the nearby Roman settlement of Olicana or other Yorkshire Roman sites, Lang found his closest parallels in first-century AD funeral stelae and memorials from north Italy, preserved in the National Museum, Ravenna (see Bendazzi and Ricci 1987). Many of these are strikingly similar in their use of arched and deeply recessed niches, architectural frames, depth of relief, in some cases the pose of the figures, detail of drapery and even hairstyles, and also the technique of building up a gesso base on a roughed-out stone surface to which colour was then added (Lang 2000, 114). There is of course no way of establishing evidence of direct copying from sculptures in this area, though the influence of northern Italy on Rome in this period is well-documented, and it may also be that appropriate models closer to home have simply not survived. Nevertheless, the case for a deliberate seeking out of models perceived as classical seems undeniable, and is backed up by the evidence from the plant-scrolls on this cross, as adduced by Cramp (1970).

The iconography of the pieces is, however, less easy to determine. Lang (2000) firmly identified Otley 1 as one of his group of 'Apostle pillars', the others being Easby 1 and Masham 1 in north Yorkshire (Lang 2001, 98–102, ills. 185–6, 193–12; and 168–71, ills. 597–631), Collingham 1 and Dewsbury 1–3 in west Yorkshire (Ills. 166–9, 190–7), and Halton in Lancashire (Collingwood 1927, fig. 92). Easby 1 has a scene with twelve surviving apostles, Halton a panel with twelve sheep, often representative of the twelve apostles, and Masham 1, Collingham 1 and Dewsbury 1–3 can all be reconstructed convincingly to include a grouping of the twelve. Otley 1, however, seems to me to be rather different. If all twelve apostles are to be imagined on face A, that would require a shaft of at least nine feet, which is not impossible, but its slender proportions suggest a miniature scale in relation to monuments such as the Bewcastle cross, say, which is wider at the top than Otley is at the bottom of the widest surviving piece. It could be that there were never more than the four surviving figures on face A, perhaps representing the four Evangelists rather than the twelve apostles. The lowest figure, with the tonsured figure in front of an angel, could then be St Matthew accompanied by his symbol, but in the larger sense of 'accompanied' Evangelists adduced by M. Brown (1996, 82–114; 2003, 359–63), in which they can simultaneously symbolise Christ, the Gospel writer and the faithful monastic scribe. An interpretation relating to the faithful transmission and following of the Law, as suggested for Dewsbury 1–3 (p. 62), seems even more likely here. The other, or all, the Evangelist symbols could have been in the cross-head, and this is very likely if Otley 7 (p. 223, Ills. 597–600) is accepted as part of this cross. The iconography of face C remains baffling, although if all the scrolls enclosed figures which were winged and also named, then they are most probably archangels, and something like the litany of invocations Kitzinger (1956, 279–80) proposed for the Cuthbert coffin might lie behind the programme here too.

Late eighth century

Browne 1880–4a, lxxiv; (–––) 1882a, 60, 379; Allen 1886, 331; Allen 1890, 296, 307, 310; Allen 1891, 228, no. 2; Speight 1900, 62, pls. on 36 and 63; Bogg 1904, fig. on 30; Collingwood 1912, 111, 130; Collingwood 1915a, 224–6, 272, 273, 277, 281, 292, figs. a–d, e, f–i on 225; Collingwood 1915b, 328; Collingwood 1916–18, 40, fig. 13; Smith 1923–4, 233, 239, fig. 8; Brøndsted 1924, 33, 35–8, 43, 70, figs. 14, 17, 27; Peers 1926, 48; Collingwood 1927, 37–8, 42, 47, 70–1, 74, fig. 52; Clapham 1930, 63; Collingwood 1932, 44, 53, fig. 3; Morris 1932, 556; Elgee and Elgee 1933, 196; Gardner 1935, 29, fig. 15; Brown 1937, 185, 189, 199, pls. LI, LII; Kendrick 1938, 116n, 194, 208; Dauncey 1941, 115; Mee 1941, 276; Gardner 1951, 26, fig. 30; Stone 1955, 20; Fisher 1959, 67, pl. 29a; Pevsner 1959, 385–6, pl. 26a; Cramp 1965, 7, 12; Taylor, H. M. 1968b, 330–1; Cramp 1970, 56–60, 62–3, no. I, Taf. 41, 42.1–4, 43.1–6, 44.1–3; Cramp 1978a, 4, 8; Cramp 1978b, 123; Bailey 1980, 190–1, fig. 53; Cramp 1984, 28, 38, 40, 210; Jewell 1986, 99, pl. XLIIIf; Wood, I. 1987, 21, 30–2, 33, 34–5, 36, pls. 1a–b, 2a–b; Bailey and Cramp 1988, 19, 20, 67, 114, 128, 135; Lang 1988, 30, ill. 13.; Lang 1990a, 7, 9, 13, 14, pls. III, V; Lang 1990b, 135–6, pl. 1; Lang 1991, 21, 22, 24, 40, 54, 56, 106, 133, 140; Cramp 1992, 25, 31, 36, 50, 56–60, 62–3, pls. 1, 2, 3.1–2, 4.1–2, 5.1–4, 6.1–2, 7.1–2, 8.1, 151, 207, 220, 225, 251, 294; Hicks 1993, 120; Lang 1993, 262–5, fig. 32.1; Lang 1994, 15; Cramp 1995, 131; Tweddle et al. 1995, 56; Bailey 1996a, 55, 56, 80, 112; Lang and Wrathmell 1997, 378; Farr 1999, 385, pl. 14.2; Henderson 1999, 154–5, 173; Lang 1999, 273, pl. 2; Wood, P. 1999, 6, fig. 4; Hadley 2000a, 237; Lang 2000, 110–11, 113–15, 118, fig. 9.2; Garrison, Nelson and Tweddle 2001, 31, cat. 49; Lang 2001, 31, 36, 91, 101, 171; Hawkes 2003b, 366; Cramp 2006a, 142

[1] The following are general references to the Otley stones: Browne 1880–4a, lxxiv; Allen and Browne 1885, 353; Allen 1890, 292, 293; Allen 1891, 229; MacMichael 1906, 364; Morris 1911, 373; Collingwood 1915a, 224, 231; Collingwood 1915b, 328; Collingwood 1927, 47; Brown 1937, 185; Mee 1941, 276; Pevsner 1959, 20, 385–6; Taylor, H. M. 1968b, 330, 331; Cramp 1970, 56; Faull 1981, 218, 219; Wood 1987, 20; Lang 1991, 38, 67, 84; Ryder 1991, 38; Ryder 1993, 22, 169; Hadley 2000a, 238; Hawkes 2003a, 83; Hawkes 2006a, 107.