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monuments, like the stones at Melsonby. At Bedale is another cylindrical shaft or pillar. Gilling and Stanwick i are shafts of the Cumbro-Mercian type, cylindrical beneath and tapered into square section above, like the Gosforth and Penrith crosses in Cumberland ; also at Middleton and Gilling are shafts with raised bands or offsets, which in Cumberland are seen connected with Viking Age ornament. Crathorne d is of this type, and nearly square in section; Kirklevington v, Pickering and Wensley i are also square, and exhibit Viking Age work. But most of the Viking Age stones are thin, such as Easington d and i, Kirklevington / and 4, Lastingham /, Middleton e, Pickhill d, Stonegrave a, and Wycliffe f.

To sum up the result of this analysis, it may be said that we have (A) thick stones with fine carving, (B) thin stones with rude carving, and (c) thick stones with rude design, better carved; though this classification is not exhaustive.

A curious form of ornament at the neck of a shaft, where a ring is supposed to go through the arris, as if to clamp the head on, is seen at Brompton h, Kirklevington y, Northallerton p, Wycliffe g; these are stones of various periods, but, like the bear-hogbacks, they show the influence of Brompton as the centre of a spreading fashion in art.

RECUMBENT MONUMENTS.

(1) Grave-slabs may have been coffin-lids such as must have fitted the "Saxon" rock-graves at Heysham (Lancashire), while other forms may have simply marked the place under which a burial was made. They are found with Anglian lettering at Wensley (a and b); another has been removed from Yarm; and those of the Durham district are well known. The two stones Wensley d and g, as already suggested, may have been recumbent, like the Melsonby stones. The Spennithorne slab bears crosses of the earlier Northumbrian type, seen again in the West Witton slab. At Crathorne are two slabs with "Maltese" crosses, apparently late; all the preceding being of the fine style. Levisham slab has an Irish-Scandinavian dragon. Some other stones, built into walls and not determinable, may be slabs; those at Middleton and Stainton have Anglian crosses, Ormesby a and are rude, and the Middleham stone is apparently of the Viking Age. The Barningham slab is missing.

In a word, grave-slabs are found of all periods and styles. (2) Shrine-shaped tombs are known in various parts of England with pre-Viking ornament. At Easington is a house-shaped stone, with tegulæ on the roof, but the ridge is broken off. At Yarm is the remnant of a tegulated stone. On Bedale b the figures resemble

an Anglian Virgin and child at Dewsbury, though the work is rude, and the open interlacing is of late character. At Oswaldkirk are two stones, which may be part of shrine-tombs or of hogbacks, both with rude work. Stonegrave c, d and e are too mutilated to show their full shape.

(3) Hogbacks are shrine-tombs with curved roof-ridge. While shrine-tombs are not uncommon in the South of England, hogbacks occur only in the North, and in a few places in Scotland where non-Celtic settlements appear to have been made, and in Cornwall. One stone, Crathorne a, is an exception to the rule that hogbacks show characters of the Viking Age; this is presumed to be a hogback because there is another stone at Durham like it, but tegulated. On the other hand, there is a curved-topped lintel at Lastingham, suggesting that the Crathorne stone may have been meant for a lintel. In any case, it is not of the first period, though its ornament is derived from the Anglian scroll and plait.

In a paper on the Early Christian monuments of the Glasgow district (read November 9, 1900), Mr. Romilly Allen traces the evolution of the hogback from Christian sarcophagi of the third century in Italy, made in imitation of roofed buildings. The hogbacked ridge, he says, appears to have been copied from the roofs of buildings actually so constructed in the eleventh century. The bears, he suggests, may have been borrowed from the Scandinavian art of the period.

Brompton is the great centre for hogbacks; there are five in the church, all with bears, and five more at Durham from Brompton. Bears occur at Ingleby Arncliffe (stone now at Durham), Lastingham, Osmotherley, Pickhill (two examples), Wycliffe (two examples), and Stainton-all within comparatively short distance of Brompton. But the idea was also carried to Heysham (Lancashire) and Lowther (Westmorland), though it is not found in Cumberland, where the hogbacks are of a different type, probably owing to the fact that the population was not Anglo-Danish, but Irish-Norse. The bear is found. also at Hickling, Notts., and Lanivet in Cornwall-a fact of much interest in connection with the distribution of Viking Age settlements. It should be noted that hogbacks are not Celtic; they are AngloDanish and Norse, evolved from English shrine-tombs.

ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES.

Some stones, still used in the fabric of churches, cannot be rightly judged at present. Kirkby Misperton may be a shaft or a bit of architectural work, as seen at Ripon; Hauxwell e may be a split shaft ;

and a few others are doubtful. But several stones are certainly parts of fine churches now entirely vanished, and sometimes unrecorded. In this way the archæology of our subject may help to rewrite the history of a dark age.

(1) Lintels. At Lastingham is a low-curved lintel, already mentioned in connection with Crathorne a; compare the dragon lintel at St. Bees (Cumberland). The Hovingham stone may be lintel, altarfront or reredos; compare the altar-front at Chur (Switzerland).

(2) Imposts, etc. The Hackness impost is probably post-Conquest. The Kirkby Hill impost is in situ. Kirkby Moorside d is a fragment of a fine church of the good period. Stanwick a and b are curious stones, with the composite or random animal-drawing affected by Anglo-Saxon art, and not like the wooden wyverns of Lastingham.

(3) Jambs. Lastingham p and q and Wycliffe h are fine specimens of the early Anglian type of ornament. The scroll on the first named is not quite like the grape-scrolls on any of our cross-shafts, and may have been carved by a foreigner.

(4) Pillars. Masham and Bedale cylindrical shafts may be parts of a building, and not supports of cross-heads; though this is uncertain. We have no other examples of cylindrical cross-shafts ornamented down to the base, though there is a very curious semicylindrical cross-shaft, with part of the head remaining, and fully ornamented, at Kirkby Stephen (Westmorland).

If these may be taken as evidence, there were fine stone-built churches at Lastingham and Kirkby Hill (where other evidence is clear), at Hovingham, Kirkby Moorside, Masham, Stanwick and Wycliffe (all of the best period), perhaps at Kirkby Misperton (where the inscribed stone gives further evidence, though of doubtful date), Bedale (where the crypt supports the inference, but the pillar seems to be late in the Anglian period), and Crathorne (resting on the supposition that the stone a was a late Anglian lintel). All these seem to indicate churches built before the Danish invasion; the next series gives eleventh century dates.

(5) Dials. Kirkdale dial is dated by its inscription 1055-65; the dials at Great Edston and Old Byland, in the same neighbourhood and in the same style, bear Anglo-Danish names, and must be of the eleventh century, though we know that Kirkdale Church was much earlier, and only restored in that period. A small dial at Sinnington may be of any age. The Skelton dial seems to be eleventh century. At the coming of the Danes it is certain that fine architecture was stopped. The hogbacks, imitating houses in wood-and-wattle, would be enough to show this. For instance, Brompton a seems to

show the low-arched doorway into such a house, while Brompton b shows the tiled roof and walls of post-and-wattle. We also know that near Carlisle in the eleventh century there was a wattled church. The revival of the arts, begun under King Edgar in the South, must have taken some time to reach the North of England, where the period of fine stone building must have been from about 650 to about 850, declining after 800, and ceasing after 867. With the year 1000 or thereabouts there was some revival of church building, but no definite indications of this can be gathered from our series of stones until we come to the dials, about the middle of the eleventh century.

Two of our monuments represent arcades. The Masham pillar shows capitals to the arches; in the Hovingham stone there are none. From this it is not safe to infer a difference in the age of the two carvings, because the practice or fancy of tombstone carvers seems to have varied. The Dewsbury Anglian shrine-tomb, the Peterborough "Hedda's tomb," Hornby shaft-base, and the Hoddam stone give capitals or imposts to the arches figured on them. But at Bishop Auckland (with figures like those of Hoddam), at Bewcastle, and at Heysham (in the churchyard shaft) the arches spring out of the pillars without interruption. In the late tenth century shaft at Nunburnholme there are no capitals, while on the Halton churchyard shaft (eleventh century) some arches have indications of imposts and some have none. In the Bakewell cross there are triple grooves like branch-bindings in scrolls, taking the place of capitals. The MSS. of all pre-Norman dates represent capitals to arches, and their occasional omission by carvers seems only to argue carelessness or freedom of treatment.

INSCRIPTIONS.

(1) Anglian. At Wensley are single words of early Anglian date. At Hackness, long inscriptions in Anglian Latin, and in Anglian runes. At Hauxwell the "St. James" inscription, and at Kirkdale the "Ethelwald" inscription, are not to be seen. The Yarm inscription is at Durham, and the Wycliffe inscribed stone is no longer at Wycliffe.

(2) Late Anglo-Saxon. At Kirkby Misperton a mangled epitaph, apparently quite late. The three dials at Kirkdale, Great Edston and Old Byland, eleventh century. From Skelton has been removed a stone with Anglian uncials and Scandinavian runes.

(3) Scandinavian. The Skelton stone, and one at a neighbouring site, Thornaby-on-Tees, are relics of the Danes in Cleveland.

The ornament associated with these inscriptions is noteworthy. At Wensley we have Anglian crosses and animals carved in the fine

style; at Hackness Anglian scrolls, interlacing, and beasts, cut before the nunnery was destroyed by the Danes, giving us fairly definite data for the placing of ornament related to these types.

We now are led onward to the examination of the subject-matter of the ornament-the human figures, animals, scroll-work and plaits found on these sculptures.

FIGURE SUBJECTS.

Adam and Eve. At Pickhill and Wath may be rude variants of a subject seen also at Dacre (Cumberland), Bride (Isle of Man), and Iona. But there is a conspicuous absence of the Old Testament subjects common in Scottish and Irish crosses, which must be remembered in estimating the amount of Celtic influence felt in pre-Norman Yorkshire.

The Annunciation, and possibly the Salutation, occur at Hovingham, as at Ruthwell, but later in style.

The Nativity is perhaps seen at Bedale, imitated later from Dewsbury. It is a common subject, as at Sandbach, etc.

The Virgin and Child seem to be represented at Oswaldkirk. St. John and Agnus Dei may be the subject of Forcett e, and possibly Stanwick n, though very rudely drawn.

The Lamb with the Holy Dove descending on it may, though the suggestion is offered with great hesitation, explain the rude figures of Stonegrave c.

St. John Evangelist is perhaps meant by the figures with wings in Brompton h, Crathorne g.

An Evangelist of Irish type occurs on the Irish-looking cross at Stonegrave.

Four Evangelists may be intended in the four middle panels at Hovingham.

Christ and the twelve Apostles, on the Masham pillar, top row; Christ in ascension, on the cloud; the Apostles on each side looking towards Him.

Christ bearing the Cross is shown at St. Andrew's, Auckland, by a nimbed person carrying a long object at the height of the middle of his figure, and two taller figures on either side. This reappears in Spennithorne a. But the two figures with hands bound to their sides in Kirklevington w, and again in Middleton done figure so bound, suggest a reference to the subject illustrated in the Boulogne Psalter, "Bind their kings with chains and their nobles in fetters of iron," though the idea seems far-fetched. We have, however, to consider what subjects were usual in the period; those which became common in later mediæval art do not help us much in this early series.

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