Bristol Museum 44/1982.

Dawson (1981, 11) reported the presence of 'a fragment of interlace built into the porch' of Aust Farm, Lawrence Weston. The stone was subsequently removed from the porch and was given to Bristol Museum in 1982 by Mr Nicholas Greenberry.[1]

Face D is in quite good condition, but the carving on face A has been extensively damaged. Much of the carved surface of the stone is red, the result of burning.

Fragment of a cross-shaft with a broad, slightly rounded edge moulding and surviving carving on two adjoining faces.

A (broad): The carved surface is badly damaged and difficult to interpret, but the face appears to be divided into two panels by a median-incised horizontal border. A broad plant stem sweeps up across the horizontal border, widening as it rises before passing under a second plant stem that splits into two near the edge moulding on the left. To the right, another pair of plant stems twist across each other before passing over and under the dividing border. At the intersection of the stems and the border there is what might be a pendant berry bunch.

B, C and E: Missing

D (narrow): A tangle of large, interlacing plant stems spreads across this face. The design is organic in form rather than geometric. Near the centre is a downward-pointing, elliptical leaf with an elongated, slightly curving tip. There is a 'V'-shaped junction between the base of this leaf and the stem from which it grows. Part of what might be a second, smaller leaf survives in the top left corner.

F (bottom): This face of the stone has been partly re-dressed with coarse, horizontal tooling to form a smooth bedding plane, probably for reuse. It is possible that this was the original bottom face of the stone, and, if so, it would indicate that the shaft was formed from more than one block.

The rather heavy interlacing plant-scroll on face D is similar to tenth-century examples from Devon (Braunton 1) and Somerset (Wells 1) (Cramp 2006, 79–80, 176, ills. 1, 324, 327). Within the study area the tenth century shaft at Kinwarton in Warwickshire offers similar large-scale interlace (p. 339, Ills. 592–6), while the tight loop in the lower right corner of face D is very like the repeated loops on the tenth-century string course fragment Bisley All Saints 4 (p. 143, Ill. 53). If there is a berry bunch on face A as suggested above, then this feature combined with rather tangled interlace might be compared to the tenth-century fragment Worcester Cathedral 2 (p. 368, Ills. 672, 674, 676). The Lawrence Weston carving is a valuable addition to the Corpus from the southern part of Gloucestershire, and should probably be dated to the tenth century like the examples above.

A chapel at Lawrence Weston is first recorded in 1274; it disappeared in the sixteenth century and its exact site is unknown (Orme and Cannon 2010, 41–3, 105).

Tenth century

Dawson 1981, 11

[1] We are grateful to David Dawson and John Bryant for help in tracing this carving, and to Gail Boyle for providing us with access to it. The inclusion of this carving as an addendum was due to the major reorganisation of gallery and office space at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery which resulted in us only gaining access in February 2012, by which time the volume was substantially paged. The location has been added to the Gloucestershire map at the beginning of the catalogue, but not to the other distribution maps.