This fragment is set on its side into the north wall of the Norman church of Saint Edwin, High Coniscliffe, County Durham. The figure wears the same sort of scalloped-hemmed short tunic found on other Viking-Age carvings in the county at Sockburn and Dinsdale, and further afield, on the Gosforth Cross in Cumbria (see Dominic Powlesland’s model at https://skfb.ly/6xOYu ). The cross seems to have been the same basic shape as at Gosforth, a cylindrical lower section transitioning into a narrower, slim, elongated four-sided stem. In her PhD thesis, Amy Miller pointed out the similar angle of the strata in the rock in this carving to that in the Gosforth Cross - both about fifteen degrees from the vertical. Usually stonemasons would have carved such pieces with the laminations running vertically ( see ‘Gosforth Cross: New Angles’ at https://player.vimeo.com/video/344185814 ). Rosemary Cramp’s Corpus of Anglo Saxon Stone Scultpure entry is at https://chacklepie.com/ascorpus/catvol1.php?pageNum_urls=89 .
Comments