The Corpus: Wareham 02

Volume 7: South West England

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Current Display: Wareham 02, Dorset

Overview

Object type: Columnar fragment [1]

Measurements: H. 64 cm (25 in); W. 25.5 > 23 cm (10 > 9 in); D. 25.5 > 21 cm (10 > 8.25 in)

Stone type: Yellowish grey (5Y 7/2), dominantly medium-grained (0.3 to 0.6 mm), clast-supported, limestone with a few scattered much larger clasts (up to 1 mm). The majority of the clasts are sub-rounded to rounded, with the well-rounded clasts resembling ooliths. Scattered small bivalve fragments up to 4 mm across. Doulting stone, Upper Inferior Oolite Formation, Inferior Oolite Group, Middle Jurassic

Plate numbers in printed volume: Pls. 122-5

Corpus volume reference: Vol 7 p. 117

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Present Location

As Wareham 1.

Evidence for Discovery

As Wareham 1.

Church Dedication

Lady St Mary

Present Condition

Badly broken at top and bottom, and worn. Faces A and B have secondary cuts along the cap, and a large portion of the base of the shaft has been cut from faces C and D.

Description

The shaft is sub-rectangular, plain at the base and capped by a roll moulding. Below this are incised pendant U-shapes or scallops, which, as can be seen most clearly on faces C and D, are neatly centred on similar incised scallops which span the corners.

Discussion

This is clearly the same type of monument as Wareham 1, although the incised free-hand scallops are difficult to parallel, whether in Britain or France (see discussion below Wareham 1).

Date

Fifth to eighth century(?)

References

R.C.H.M.(E.) 1970a, pl. 6; R.C.H.M.(E.) 1970b, 309

Endnotes

[1] The unique collection of sculpture from this site includes some possible Roman stones, as well as five Brittonic inscriptions which have generally been dated between the seventh and ninth century, and thus seem to have been produced within the period of the Anglo-Saxon hegemony. Although these have been included in recent catalogues and discussions of the inscriptions by Celtic specialists (see the Celtic Inscribed Stones Project on-line database: ,and Sims-Williams 2003), they were excluded from Okasha's south-western corpus (Okasha 1993, appendix D). They have therefore been considered in some detail here (see nos. 5–9 below), and are discussed in John Higgitt's chapter of the introduction, p. 65.