Built into the inner face of the west wall of vestry at the west end of the south aisle of the nave

A number of inscribed fragments was found shortly after work began on the destruction of the nave early in May 1841 (articles in Dorset County Chronicle for 6 and 20 May reprinted in Sturdy 1940, 83). These probably included all five of the surviving inscribed stones, but only in the case of Wareham 7 (see below) is there precise information on where the inscription was found (Sturdy 1940, 83–4; Hutchins 1861, 115–16). If, as is certain only in the case of Wareham 7, the stones were re-used in the structure of the Anglo-Saxon church, the inscriptions must be earlier than that structure. The building of the Anglo-Saxon church is undocumented but the evidence for its plan and elevation may favour a typological dating to 'somewhere around 800' (Gem 1993, 39–45, and quotation at p. 41). Wareham 5 was first noted by Robinson (1876, 144) in its present position, before the south porch, built in 1842, was converted into a vestry.

Lady St Mary

Evidence of use as door-jamb; lock and bolt marks visible to left of inscription

Inscription An inscription in two lines incised into a re-used, presumably Roman, architectural fragment (R.C.H.M.(E.) 1970b, 308, no. i; Radford and Jackson 1970, 311). The right-hand end of both lines has been lost.

VIDCV—

FILIVSVID[A] —

The Latin word FILIVS ('son') is clear. The inscription can therefore be read as VIDCV — FILIVS VID[/em>A] —. The incomplete first and third words were Brittonic personal names (Radford and Jackson 1970, 311; Sims-Williams 2003, 129, 212, 386).

The lettering is confident and stylish and cut with a V-section. Letters vary in height with the first V at 5 cm and the C at 7 cm. The lettering combines capitals (F, I, S and V), rectangular C, uncial D and Insular half-uncial L. Two of the Is terminate in distinctive forked serifs and strokes are extended beyond the angles of the C and the Vs to produce similar forked forms. There are ligatures of F with I, and of L with I in FILIVS. These two ligatures are characteristic of inscriptions of Okasha's Category 1 in south-west Britain and of Nash-Williams' Group I in Wales (Okasha 1993, 26, 27; Nash-Williams 1950, 11, 228, 230, figs. 257, 258). These ligatures, and parallels for the forked terminals at Llanfihangel Cwmdu and Aberdaron and on the 'St Peter' stone at Whithorn, support the 'probably 7th-century' dating of Radford and Jackson (1970, 311; Nash-Williams 1950, nos. 54, 77, 78, pls. VII, VIII, figs. 46, 62, 63; R.C.A.H.M.S. 1912, 165, fig. 109). The results of Sims-Williams' review of the chronology of Celtic inscriptions in Britain do not conflict with such a dating. He assigns the text of this inscription to his Brittonic Period 14–21, which implies a phonological date range between approximately the second half of the sixth and the earlier ninth centuries (Sims-Williams 2003, 285, 287–8, 291, 294–5, 367).

Inscription The inscription on Wareham 5 commemorated a male with a Brittonic name, who was the son of another person with a Brittonic name. The best analogies for the lettering can be found amongst inscriptions in the Celtic west of Britain. The dating of the lettering to around the seventh century is compatible with the broader phonological dating.

Seventh century

Hutchins 1861–73, I, 115–16; Robinson 1876, 144, fig. IV; Rhys 1892, xxv, fn.; Stuart 1892, xxiv, fig. 4; Gasquet and Bishop 1908, 55; R.C.H.M.(E.) 1970a, l, no. i; R.C.H.M.(E.) 1970b, 308, no. i, pls. 165, 166; Radford and Jackson 1970, 311, no. i; Newman and Pevsner 1972, 436; Radford 1975a, 13; Brown 1989, 8, fig.; Hinton 1992, 260; Okasha 1993, 348; Yorke 1995, 71, fig. 19; Sims-Williams 2003, 129, 212, 265, 367, 386, no. 2036/Dor.i

[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 Wareham 5–9 below), and are discussed in John Higgitt's chapter of the introduction, p. 65.

[2] Wareham 5–9 are inscribed stones, all of which seem to have been found re-used in the fabric of the nave of the Anglo-Saxon church that was demolished in 1841. The stones were Roman architectural fragments