The Corpus: Gressingham 2

Volume 9: Cheshire and Lancashire

Select a site alphabetically from the choices shown in the box below. Alternatively, browse sculptural examples using the Forward/Back buttons.

Chapters for this volume, along with copies of original in-text images, are available here.

Current Display: Gressingham 2, Lancashire

Overview

Object type: Part of shaft [1]

Measurements: H. 77 cm (30.3 in); W. 17 cm (6.7 in); D. 21 cm (8.25 in)

Stone type: Yellowish grey (5Y 7/2), poorly sorted, clast-supported, quartz sandstone. The sub-angular to sub-rounded clasts range from medium-grained (0.3 mm) to granular (3.0 mm), but are mostly medium- to coarse-grained in the range 0.4 to 1.0 mm; larger clasts sub-rounded. ?Ward's Stone Sandstone Formation, Millstone Grit, Carboniferous

Plate numbers in printed volume: Ills. 462-3

Corpus volume reference: Vol 9 p. 175-6

(There may be more views or larger images available for this item. Click on the thumbnail image to view.)

Present Location

Re-used as external south-west quoin stone of nave.

Evidence for Discovery

First recorded in Pevsner (1969b, 133).

Church Dedication

St John

Present Condition

Only one face is now visible and that is heavily worn. One border, now at the top of the stone in its horizontal position, has been cut away.

Description

The border-moulding for the bottom of the shaft survives to the right whilst one lateral border remains fragmentarily. These borders contain four volutes of a very worn single-stemmed spiral scroll. The two volutes at the base of the shaft (to the right in its present horizontal position) terminate in a fruit rosette. The second volute from the base drops a pointed leaf, with pellets at its base to the right.

Discussion

The scroll is too worn for definitive comment, but the form with pointed leaf and two pellets at the base is known locally at Halton St Wilfrid 1 and 6 as well as Heysham 1 (Ills. 466, 492, 514–15).

Date

Ninth century

References

Pevsner 1969b, 16, 133; Edwards, B. 1978a, 60; Edwards, B. 1988a; Kenyon 1991, 102; Bailey 1996b, 24; Crosby 1998, 30; Noble 1999, 23, fig. 34; Bailey 2003, 215; Salter 2005, 39; Hilton et al. 2007, 39, fig. 41

Endnotes

[1] The following are general references to the Gressingham stones: Ditchfield 1909, 120; Fellows-Jensen 1985, 211, 402; Blair 2005, 216. The following is an unpublished manuscript reference: BL Add. MS 37550, item 600 (Romilly Allen collection).