Volume 13: Derbyshire and Staffordshire

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Current Display: Bradbourne 5, Derbyshire Forward button Back button
Overview
Present Location
Archaeology Department, University of Sheffield
Evidence for Discovery
Uncovered, and recognised by Eddie Castledine, during repairs to the southern part of the church wall in 2002 (Moreland 2003, 154).
Church Dedication
All Saints
Present Condition
Fragmentary and damaged
Description

A (broad): The remains of two intersecting sections of roll moulding survive, the lower one of which contains the remains of the head of a human figure with short hair and deeply drilled eyes. To the right are the remnants of the terminal of a floriated rod.

B (narrow): upper spandrel. Only the fragmentary remains of a section of roll moulding facing onto A survives.

C (broad) and D (narrow): Broken

Fig 40
Discussion

The carved remains of this small fragment are sufficient to have allowed for its reconstruction (Fig. 40) as a section from the upper right-hand quadrant of the central medallion of a cross-head, containing a portion of an angel’s wing on the left, and the floriate terminal of a staff held over the angel’s shoulder, in the space between the wing and the moulding enclosing the panel (Moreland 2010, 273-4, fig. on 273). It thus bears a remarkable similarity, iconographically, to the central medallions of the Eyam cross-head (1A and 1C) which contain staff-bearing angels (Ills. 204, 206). If, as seems likely, it represents a fragment of the cross-head that once surmounted Bradbourne 1, and can be related to the cross-arm that also survives at Bradbourne (no. 4)—a supposition not contradicted by the stone type—it thus extends our understanding of the potential iconographic programme of that cross-head, and the way it replicates that preserved at Eyam (see Bradbourne 4).

Date
Late eighth / ninth century
References
Moreland 2003, 154; Hawkes 2007a, 431, 437, fig. 29; Moreland 2010, 273–4, fig. on 273
J.H.
Endnotes

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