Volume 8: Western Yorkshire

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Current Display: Birstall 1, West Riding of Yorkshire Forward button Back button
Overview
Present Location
At the east end of the north aisle in a display area
Evidence for Discovery
First mentioned in 1853, built into the south porch of the church (Armistead 1853, 41). The old parish church, with the exception of the tower, was demolished in 1865 (Auden 1909, 20) 20) and completely rebuilt between 1863 to 1870 (Ryder 1993, 143). This stone was left built into the retaining wall ofthe churchyard immediately west of the tower, from where it was removed and brought into the church in 1907 (Auden 1909, 20).
Church Dedication
St Peter
Present Condition
Incomplete, worn on face A, and damaged on face B.
Description

An incomplete cross-base. Its one complete face shows a slight taper. The upper and surviving side edges are finished with a cable moulding, the decorated faces within them are further outlined on all edges by a roll moulding.

A (broad): The face is filled by a shallow and stylised, but modelled, bush-scroll. All the spiral volutes spring from the central stem, and many side branches have sub-volutes. All volutes enclose tri-lobed flowers or berry bunches, and triangular pointed leaves depend from the outside of some volutes. The design verges on the abstract, but remains fully organic, with every volute rationally attached to the main plant.

B (narrow): Much damaged, but the remains of fine, rounded interlace strands survive for about two-thirds of the height on the left.

C (broad): This face has been completely cut away, to reveal the inside of the tapering socket. This measures 31 > 25 cm (12.2 > 9.8 in) in width, and is 20 cm (8.2 in) deep from top to bottom.

D (narrow): A fine rounded strand forms a pattern of interlinked twists. Within the visible portion the design, though irregular in format, is completely controlled, with no loose ends.

Discussion

Of the six shaped cross-bases from the West Riding (see Chap. IV. p. 43), three are particularly closely related, both geographically and in their use of elaborate decoration, including in all three cases the use of the bush-scroll: these are Birstall 1, Hartshead (Ills. 310–14), and Rastrick 1 (Ills. 626–30). Collingwood (1915a, 175) placed the Birstall fragment later than the other two, in the eleventh century, although he noted the connection with bush-scrolls on earlier shafts at Dewsbury and Thornhill. Smith (1923–4, 240) thought Birstall was much earlier, and compared its designs with motifs in the Barberini Gospels (Webster and Backhouse 1991, 205, cat. 160; see Fig. 13f–i, p. 51)[1], probably because the fine strand at Birstall suggested the delicate drawing of the manuscript, and indeed he grouped it with other works he considered to belong to the period 750–800. The form of the scrolls in the manuscript and the leaf and flower forms are quite different, however. Nevertheless the use of twists seems to look back to early Anglian sculptural traditions, as at Jarrow, no. 22a and Hexham nos. 36–8 (Cramp 1984, pls. 99.527–8, 100.529–34, 185.1016–18), which are related to early Northumbrian manuscript art, as on the Durham MS A. II. 10, fol. 3v (Webster and Backhouse 1991, 111–12, cat. 79), although on Birstall the effect is looser and less complex. Uninhabited bush-scrolls seem uncommon, but there is an eighth-century example on Northallerton 1B in north Yorkshire (Lang 2001, ill. 663); and one of the eighth to ninth centuries on Ilkley 6 (Ill. 387); but perhaps of most significance are the two rather later examples which are very close to Birstall in a number of aspects, on the shafts Dewsbury 7 (Ills. 212, 214) and Thornhill 6 (Ill. 747).

Decorated bases in themselves are rare survivals (Bailey 1980, 242), and that there are four, all of a similar tapering form and geographically all very close to each other, all on the same Roman road (Margary 1967, no. 712), and near the major centres of Dewsbury and Thornhill in the valley of the Calder or its tributaries, to which all are related by some design elements, seem facts to take seriously. (The fourth, the example from Woodkirk (Ills. 841–5), has the overall form but no surviving decoration.) Collectively all support the idea of ecclesiastical control over a long period, most probably related to the possessions of the minster at Dewsbury (see Chap. VII, p. 74).

Date
Late ninth to tenth century
References
Armistead 1853, 41, and fig.; Auden 1909,20–2, pl. facing 20; Morris 1911, 109; Collingwood 1912, 128; Collingwood 1915a, 144–5, 269, 275, 283, figs. a–c on 145; Collingwood 1915b, 334–5; Smith 1923–4, 240, fig. 10; Collingwood 1927, 175, fig. 224a–c; Kendrick 1941a, 18; Mee 1941, 59; Kendrick 1949, 65, fig. 6d; Pevsner 1959, 21, 105; Bailey 1980, 242; Ryder 1991, 14; Ryder 1993, 143; Sidebottom 1994, 91–5, 228, no. 1, and pls.; Sidebottom 1997, 47
Endnotes
[1] Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Barb. Lat. 570, see for example fol. 124b.

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