British Museum, London (accession number 1969/4–1)

Discovered 1939 on demolition of a chimney-breast in house at East Stour, reused as quoin stone at first floor level. Removed and stored in contractor's yard at Hatch Beauchamp, Somerset. Later used as garden ornament at Halse; subsequently moved to Trebles Holford, Somerset (Drinkwater 1960). Purchased by the British Museum in 1969. (Possibly derived from the parish church of Christ Church.)

Damaged particularly at the edges, but some details good and crisp

Arched bands, enriched with pellets, pierced circles or chevrons, separate the lower third of each face from the upper. In such a square-sectioned shaft it is difficult to determine which was the principal face, and I have described it in the sequence used by Drinkwater (1960).

A: The upper section is carved with one complete and one nearly complete medallion of plant-scroll, with median-incised stems, springing from a stepped base. In the lower scroll the heart-shaped medallion is formed by two crossing scrolls, which bifurcate to form the medallion above and to cross through and fill the space below. There is a profusion of triangular berry bunches, but no leaves save the small rounded palmette leaves clinging to the interior of the strands, and buds or leaves at the junction of the crossings. In the upper scroll is a large banded bud. Below the pelleted arched band are two pairs of encircled pattern E knots with pattern E terminals. The strands are median-incised.

B: Above, three conjoined rows of turned pattern C with median-incised strands and long pointed terminals. Below the pelleted band is an elegant tree-scroll, with a straight segmented and incised central stem, terminating in a stiff triangular bud or berry bunch, flanked by leaf-flowers with small pointed and scooped leaves. Similar leaf-flowers fill the spandrels of the volutes, which enclose whorls of closely packed long triangular leaves with scooped centres and curling tips.

C: Above, an elaborate plant-scroll consisting of two volutes enclosing two large flowers. The upper blossom has deeply-cut curling and ribbed petals sprouting from a ribbed calix. The central 'stamen' terminates in a deeply pierced roundel. Clinging to the exterior and interior of the median-incised volutes are small rounded palmette leaves, and the intersections of the volutes are filled on one side by a deeply-cut curling leaf, on the other by a leaf-flower with curling petals. The lower volute is disfigured by a large hole and is very worn, but it seems to contain a flower with curling petals which enclose rounded and ribbed petals or buds. The volute strands, as above, have clinging palmette leaves, and in the spandrel above the arch is a tiny rosette flower. The arch below is decorated with pierced pellets. Below is a panel of irregular interlace with median-incised strands.

D: This face is very damaged. The upper section has a form of pattern E with median-incised strands; below, the arched band is decorated with a herringbone pattern. The tangled plant-scroll which it frames is too worn to be decipherable.

E (top): Tapering rectangular dowel hole.

Despite the damage it is possible to see that this is a very well carved and well designed piece. The formula whereby the panels of plant-scrolls and interlace alternate is given added interest by the variation of detail, as for example the different patterning of the arcades at the base of the stone. It is a formula which was perhaps applied also on the much more damaged cross from Gillingham (see Ills. 65–7), and this link which is also apparent in the interlace is interesting in that East Stour was a dependent chapel of Gillingham (Hall 2000, 15).

The cutting on all undamaged areas is sharp and confident. With regard to the detail of the ornament, the free-flowing berried scroll shows no hint of the influence of acanthus scrolls, nor has it the stiffness of the Britford scrolls (Ills. 411–20) although it shares the clinging palmette leaves. The long curling scooped leaves which are found in the plant-scrolls on all four faces harmonise the patterns and individualise this skilful carver. They and the pointed leaf-flowers on face B are best paralleled in manuscripts, where the scooped centres are indicated by deeper colouring (Cramp 1975, 155). There is a strikingly close analogy for the pointed leaf-flowers in BL Royal 1.E.VI, fol. 4r (West 1984a, 42; Wilson 1984, ill. 103), whilst exotic pendant leaf-flowers occur in the Barberini Gospels, fol. 124v (Webster and Backhouse 1991, ill. 160). The leaf-flowers can also be compared with Keynsham 9 (Ill. 295), and the Lechmere headstone, Worcestershire, which also has tiny rosette flowers (Cramp 1975, pl. XIX).

All of these parallels in English art point to the early ninth century. The only difficulty in dating the shaft to that period has been the exotic ribbed flowers on face C, which have been seen as of acanthus type or 'Byzantine blossoms' and which Drinkwater first dated to the tenth/ eleventh century (1960, 87). In 1975 I did provide some ninth-century parallels from Hungarian metalwork ((–––) 1930, 105–6, pl. 33; Cramp 1975, 191, 245–6), and later West noted that the design is particularly close to the floral forms carved on eighth-century wooden panels from the al-Aqca mosque in Jerusalem (Golvin 1971, pl. 27.6). West considered that 'the ensemble is so similar as to suggest the possibility of some direct model, probably transmitted through portable artefacts' (West 1984a, 42). Exotic artefacts from the Near East are well represented in European collections from late antiquity onwards, and whether a model for this pattern would have been of metal, wood, ivory or textile is impossible to tell, but I have previously drawn attention to the fact that the exotic leaf-flower, the tiny rosette flowers and the pelleted surrounds are all found on a small trial piece from Canterbury which has been dated to the early ninth century (Cramp 1975, 191, pl. XXa; Tweddle et al 1995, 134–5, ills. 54–6), so models could have been circulating at that time. There seems no reason therefore to push the date of the East Stour shaft to the late ninth/early tenth century as I did previously. Indeed it has features such as the style of carving and the taste for surface ornament which relate it to the animal art of Wessex — a style which cou ld overlap with this (see introduction p. 46). The vinescroll here could well have a theological significance (see introduction p. 55), but the other ornament, especially when painted, may have been to enhance the cross by sumptuous surface ornament.

Ninth century

Drinkwater 1960, 82–7, figs. 14, pls. XII, XIII; Jope 1964, 102n; Newman and Pevsner 1972, 198n; R.C.H.M.(E.) 1972, xxx, 16, pl. 3; Cramp 1975, 187, 189–91, fig. 19j, pl. XVIII; Hinton 1977, 85; Cramp 1978, 9; West 1980, 222; West 1983, 49; Plunkett 1984, I, 214, 216–17, II, 296, 388, fig. 47; West 1984a, 42–3, cat. 23, colour plate II; Cramp 1992, 151, 153–5, 169, 226, fig. 19j; Rodwell and West 2001, 156; Hawkes 2002, 274

[1]The identification of stone type here is by B. C. Worssam.