Volume 2: Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire-North-of-the-Sands

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Current Display: Brigham 03, Cumberland Forward button Back button
Overview
Present Location
In church
Evidence for Discovery
First recorded in 1957 (Bailey 1963b)
Church Dedication
St Bridget
Present Condition
Only parts of two adjacent faces, A and B, survive
Description

Rectangular cross-shaft. A plain horizontal border marks the base of the single incomplete panel on both faces A and B. The undecorated section below this border was presumably inserted into a socket or directly into the ground.

A (broad): Part of a fettered ribbon animal is laid diagonally across the panel, its contoured body bound by flat median-incised strands. At the damaged edge of the stone are traces of a hip and, perhaps also part of the animal, a spiral. Below the spiral are two scooped leaves terminating one of the interlace strands.

B (narrow): Unidentifiable interlace whose broad flat strands are median-incised. One strand terminates in a plain pointed lobed leaf; the lobes each carry a drilled hole. Below the leaf is a tightly curled tendril enclosing a pellet.

C (broad) and D (narrow): Recut.

Discussion

Despite the difficulties of reconstructing the zoomorphic ornament on face A it is clear that its contoured ribbon animal belongs to a familiar Insular Jellinge type. The function of the spiral on this face is uncertain but both spiral hips and spiralling offshoots to strands of interlace are familiar elements in the vocabulary of this style. Face B mixes interlace and foliate motifs. The fusion of these two kinds of decoration had already occurred in pre-Viking England in the art of manuscripts, metalwork and sculpture (see Irton 1), but the Brigham dominance of interlace over scroll seems to be a feature of Viking-period treatments.

Date
Tenth century
References
Bailey 1963b, pl. 1; Bailey 1974a, I, 180–4, II, 55, pls.
Endnotes

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