In a display area at the west end of the nave

The stones from Gargrave were first published by the Rev. C. H. Parez (1893), who found them in the vicarage garden in 1892. He records that the stones had lain there since 1851 when the present church was built, replacing a sixteenth-century church except for the tower. The stones were found as building material among the foundations of an older church, in the process of demolition. They were still in the vicarage garden in 1912, when seen by Collingwood.

St Andrew

Incomplete but in good condition

A shaft of slab-like section, edged on all faces by broad flat mouldings, although the angles are slightly rounded.

A (broad): There are the remains of two panels, although there is no border between them other than the moulding round the cross. (i) Only the fragment of the upper panel survives. This shows the hoofed feet and tail of a quadruped facing left. (ii) The lower panel is dominated by a hammerhead cross with a double cross-bar and with arms of type E10. The cross is double outlined. The spaces between the arms and to the left of the lower left arm are filled by loose pellets. Below the arms on each side is a double spiral, the one on the right also with a loose pellet to its left.

B (narrow): This face has interlace patterns, three registers of half pattern F separated by long glides infilled with loose pellets.

C (broad): At the bottom is a large spiral root from which develop other spirals and one large pointed leaf. A median-incised stem divides the face above, with an apparently detached double spiral and some loose pellets on either side. The stem is clearly broadening in some way just below the top, possibly into the side arms of another cross. Two loose pellets are visible to the left of this feature.

D (narrow): This seems to be the same as face B but the terminal at the foot of the shaft is clear on this side. It is a simple pattern E knot. The face also has a flat lower border.

Collingwood (1915a, 175) suggested that the animal on face A must have had a back-turned head, which he deduced from the position of its legs. He also suggested that it possibly represented the Agnus Dei, but though its relationship to the cross supports this, the absence of the head renders it an unprovable hypothesis. The ornament shares several characteristics with Bailey's 'spiral-scroll school' in Cumbria (see for example St Bees 2 and Unknown Provenance 1: Bailey and Cramp 1988, ills. 551–4, 606–8), especially in its use of pellets. The hammerhead cross depicted on face A is paralleled in the West Riding only by the free-armed head at Middlesmoor (Ill. 539). The carving may however have been done by a local sculptor more in touch with Anglian traditions.

Tenth century

Parez 1893, 88–9, figs. I, II, III; Collingwood 1912, 119, 129; Collingwood 1915a, 175, 265, 274, 279, figs. g–j on 175; Collingwood 1927, 90, fig. 111; Bailey 1980, 183; Bailey and Cramp 1988, 31, 45

[1] The following are general references to the Gargrave stones: Morris 1911, 225; Collingwood 1915b, 334; Morris 1923, 225, 549; Mee 1941, 141; Pevsner 1959, 216.