Derby Museum and Art Gallery

See Derby (St Alkmund) 9.

St Alkmund

Reasonably good. There is a little damage on D where a shallow slot has been carved across the face, otherwise, there are a few pits and surface damage and a small area of A shows a little dressing-off, but this is not deep enough to destroy the carving. The moulding at the bottom of A is missing.

Decorated only on A, the other faces being plain. A single edge moulding surrounds the upper surface except at one end, which has been broken off.

A (broad): This face contains the incised plain shaft, approximately 10 cm (4 in) wide, of a double-barred cross contained by a wide flat frame running around the three surviving sides.

B and D (long): Rough and undecorated

C (end): Plain and slightly damaged

E (end): Plain with a shallow slot carved into it.

While it might seem doubtful that this tomb-cover is of pre-Conquest origin, its decoration being such that it could date from the end of the Anglo-Saxon period to the twelfth or even thirteenth century, Everson and Stocker have discussed the piece in relation to comparable monuments extant in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, linking it to their ‘Mid Kesteven’ group of grave-covers, which they date to the late tenth-early eleventh centuries. With its framed double-barred cross it certainly has much in common with this group of monuments, although it lacks any decoration on its sides.

Late tenth to early eleventh centuries

Radford 1976, 37, 45, 54, no. 11, pl. 11(b); Sidebottom 1994, 149, 244 (Derby 12); Everson and Stocker 1999, 36, 41, 44, fig. 9; Everson and Stocker 2015, 59, 108, 111, 114, fig. 8