Appendix B item (Stones wrongly associated with pre-Conquest period)

A cross-shaft now at the west end of the nave of St Peter's church, East Marton (SD 905510) was found 'among the bushes near St Helen's Hill on the River Wharfe, two miles below Thorp Arch in Yorkshire' (Whitaker 1812, 185, pl. facing), and subsequently taken to Gledstone Hall (Collingwood 1915a, 176). It was placed in East Marton church in 1913. The shaft is unusual in having no edge mouldings, yet being rectangular-sectioned, almost square, not a round shaft. Nevertheless the sinuous interlacing forms, some broad, some narrower, which are the main feature of all sides — it is not always clear whether these are abstract, plant or animal — often behave as if the shaft were round, continuing from one side to the next. The battered edges have obscured this in some places. Collingwood compared the shaft to Jellinge-influenced Viking-age work such as Gosforth 1 and Great Clifton 1, Cumberland, but it seems to be an unequivocally Romanesque piece. Men in animal coils occur in Anglo-Saxon art: compare Rothbury 1, Northumberland (Cramp 1984, pl. 215.1224), and see also the discussion in this volume of Bilton in Ainsty 1 (p. 96, Ill. 33), where they are often taken to represent scenes of Hell. Here, however, the popular twelfth-century Romanesque theme of St Michael and the dragon is a more likely subject.