EARLY CHRISTIAN ART 



which it was built, it was presented by Mr. F. B, Crowe to the Norwich 

 Museum. The house in question was not a very old one, but it stood on the 

 site of the church of St. Vedast, and the part of the wall where the stone was 

 found may have been the remains of the enclosing wall of the ancient church- 

 yard. The fragment of the pre-Norman cross-shaft, which is of hard 

 sandstone, measures 2 feet ii| inches high by i foot 5 inches wide at the 

 bottom, and i foot ^ inch wide at the top by from i foot to 7 inches thick. 

 Two of the faces of the shaft are damaged, and the remaining two faces are 

 sculptured with round-headed panels containing zoomorphic decoration. The 

 panel on the wider face is complete, but that on the narrower face is 

 partially cut away. The design in each of the panels is similar, although not 

 identical, and consists of a pair of beasts placed one above the other, the back- 

 ground being fiUed-in with the interlacings of their tails. The heads of the 

 beasts in the complete panel are bent backwards, and shown in profile, 

 whereas those of the beasts on the other, or incomplete, panel are seen in full 

 face. The bodies of the beasts in the complete panel have a double outline 

 and conventional spirals where the limbs join the body. This monument has 

 been described and illustrated by the Rev. W. Hudson, F.S. A., in a paper' On 

 a sculptured stone recently removed from a house on the site of the church of 

 St. Vedast, Norwich,' in Proc. Norf. and Noriv. Arch. Soc. xiii, 1 1 6. 



The pre-Norman sculptured monuments of Norfolk which have just 

 been described are of two kinds, namely, recumbent sepulchral cross-slabs and 

 erect free-standing crosses. The cross-slabs belong to a type which is found 

 within a sufficiently well-defined geographical area.^ 



The peculiarities of these slabs are (i) that they are long and narrow and 

 wider at one end than the other : (2) that they have crosses at one or both 

 ends with a shaft extending along the whole length of the central axis of the 

 slab, and (3) that the backgrounds of the crosses are decorated with panels of 

 three- or four-cord plaitwork. The proportions of the slabs and their similarity 

 to the sepulchral recumbent monuments of the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 

 turies suggest that they were either placed horizontally over the grave of the 

 deceased, as body-stones, or that they served in some cases as the covers of 

 stone coffins. This theory does not rest on mere conjecture, for when the 

 ancient Saxon burial ground beneath the north transept of Peterborough was 

 uncovered during the course of the restoration in 1888, slabs of this kind 

 were discovered in situ with the remains of the upright head- and foot-stones 

 at each end. The finds at Cambridge Castle in 18 10 (which included two 

 stone coffins and several small head-stones bearing crosses) seem to point to 

 the same conclusion. 



With regard to the date of this class of sepulchral monument, it does not 

 appear Hkely that they are much earlier than the tenth century, and the fact 

 that several of them were got from beneath the ramparts of Cambridge Castle, 

 which was built by William the Conqueror, shows that they cannot have been 



1 Cambridge. — Six complete slabs and two broken ones dug up on the site of the castle, one of which is 

 now in the Fitzwilliam Museum {Arch, xxvii. 228 and Jrch. Jour. xii. 201). 



Ixworth, Suffolk.— Two slabs found under the floor of the church and nuw at the abbey {Proc. Suff. Inst. 

 J}/ Arch, iii (1863), 298). 



Peterborough Cathedral.— Tvio slabs found in situ under the floor of the north transept {Assoc. Arch. Soc. 



Rep. vol. xix). . 



Lincoln Cathedral. —A slab now in the cloisters. ' iona'w.— Portion of a slab in the Guildhall Museum. 

 Milton Bryan, Beds.—h slab dug up near the church {Proc. Soc. Antiq. ser. ii, xx, 356). 



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