28 THE CHURCH OF ST. HELEN'S, DARLEY DALE. 



oldest of the relics that were transported to Lombardale was the 

 fragment of an upright cross, carved with interlaced knotwork. 

 The fragment is only nineteen inches high, but enough remains 

 to show that it is part of a large upstanding cross of an early 

 type, the medium breadth of the shaft being fifteen inches, and 

 its thickness eleven. This relic was in Mr. Bateman's Lom- 

 berdale Museum, and so also was a piece of slab with a diaper 

 pattern, and one or two incised stones that may be as old as 

 the cross, together with the lower part of a coped tomb of the 

 twelfth century, and upwards of a dozen other sepulchral slabs, 

 none more modern than the thirteenth century. In the porch 

 there are either portions or complete specimens of about twelve 

 more slabs. See Plate I. One of the most perfect of these 

 bears a cross with floriated head, a sword on the sinister side 

 of the stem, and a bugle-horn at the base ; it has been engraved 

 in Lysons' Derbyshire, and copied in several other works.* 

 This slab, which is of thirteenth century work, commemorated 

 the sepulture of a forester of fee, who were invariably 

 men of position in the district, and whose distinctive emblem 

 was a bugle-horn. The Gomfreys held one of these hereditary 

 Peak forestships, and this is the true explanation of the 

 presence of the bugle on the double Gomfrey brass of the 

 fourteenth century in Dronfield Church. The suggestion of 

 horn service offered in the first volume of Churches of Derby- 

 shire, to account for the bugle on a priest's brass at that 

 church, is incorrect. The elder of these two Gomfrey brothers, 

 both of whom were priests, was an hereditary forester ; he would 

 appear at the Forest Pleas, and fulfil other duties of his position 

 (which were by no means light) by deputy. I have found 

 another case of a clerical forester in Yorkshire, and two of 

 lady foresters. Compare also with this bugle slab the two 

 early bugle slabs to foresters of fee found at Hope Church, 

 and illustrated in the fourth volume of this Journal. 



One of the memorial stones in the porch, which is simply 

 marked with two incised straight lines forming a plain cross, 

 is possibly of Saxon date; the remainder vary from the eleventh 



* It is not, therefore, reproduced on Plate I. 



