Exeter City Museums and Art Gallery, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter. On display (accession no. 53/1911)

Perhaps originally from a point on the riverside near to St Edmund's church (Lega-Weekes 1941, 69). The first record of this shaft may have been as the 'broken cross' [cruc' rupte] mentioned in a city roll for 1316–17 and which was said to be outside the west gate of the city, a location which has been deduced as being by a crossing point of the river near to St Edmund's church (ibid., 71). It was next recorded when the Exe bridge was demolished in 1778, and since the middle arches of the bridge had been repaired in 1539 with stone brought from the recently dissolved St Nicholas Priory, another supposition is that the cross may have come from there. It was purchased for one guinea by William Nation and set up by the corner of an entrance to his house, at the junction of High Street and Gandy Street (ibid., 69). In 1910 it was moved to the grounds of St Nicholas Priory, and in 1991 to the museum.

Edge moulding broken off, possibly when used as a gate-post

A (broad): Four panels on the shaft and part of the head, divided by narrow roll mouldings. At the base, two registers of jumbled key patterns of the diagonal type found in some Welsh crosses (Allen 1903, 360, nos. 1010–1012); above, two separate panels of similar key patterns; and the uppermost panel is filled by a bold widestranded pattern composed of two interlinked loops. There is the beginning of a similar looped pattern in the head.
B (narrow): Six and a half small panels, each filled with two interlinked loops, and a plain panel marked with a hole, and faint lines which may have formed a sundial.
C (broad): This face is very worn but originally it was probably entirely decorated with key patterns, with a half panel at the base, then two panels each about 30 cm high, and two more above, one worn and one almost obliterated.
D (narrow): Six and a half simple diagonal key patterns (Allen 1903, 356, no. 985)

Amongst the Devon crosses this is most akin to Copplestone (p. 82) and both are carved from similar types of southern Dartmoor granite, but the carving here is less intricate and cruder, with no attempt at geometric interlace. Interlinked loops and simple key patterns are also found on Cornish crosses, such as Sancreed 3 (Langdon 1896, 361; Okasha 1993, fig. II.54(i)), or Sancreed 4 (Langdon 1896, 364) for key patterns and Redgate 1, St Cleer for interlinked loops (ibid., 378), but the division of shafts into small panels is not common in Cornwall. The neatly panelled ornament of interlinked loops and the diagonal key or diaper pattern is however closely paralleled in monuments from south Wales, such as Llantwit Major churchyard (Nash-Williams 1950, 142–3, no. 222, fig. 155) or Llanfynydd (ibid., 115–16, no. 159, pl. XL). Both of these are dated by Nash-Williams to the tenth century. It is probably significant that both this cross and Copplestone are monuments which marked secular boundaries, and they could represent a new fashion for such monuments which drew its inspiration from western traditions.

Tenth / eleventh century

Jenkins 1841, 406; Oliver 1861, 61; Clarke 1905, 135, pl. ; Rowley 1912, 65–9, pl. opp. 65; Cresswell 1920; Ditchfield 1927, 10, ill. on 9; Cottrill 1931, 28; Reed 1935, 288; Phillips 1937a, 224; Phillips 1937b, 293; Waterfield 1937, 177; Phillips 1938, 322, 336; Phillips 1940, 270–1; Lega-Weekes 1941, 68–71; Pevsner 1952, 16, 154–5; Pearce 1978, 109; Todd 1987, 299; Cherry and Pevsner 1989, 38

[1] Identified by Cherry (1912, 66) as St Osgyth, a Mercian princess (see Bethell 1970).
[2]The identification of stone type here is by R. C. Scrivener.