ON THE PRE-NORMAN SCULPTURED STONES OF DERBYSHIRE. 167 



believes to have been hexagonal, and he suggests that it may 

 have been the lower limb of a gable cross. There are some 

 surviving examples of sculptured socket stones for pre-Norman 

 crosses, and some of the shafts which remain have tongues at 

 the bottom to fit into such a socket. Few, if any, have a 

 sufficient length of unsculptured stone at the foot to give them 

 stability if placed in the ground. Some very interesting socket 

 stones were found at Chester-le-Street in 1883, and there is a 

 large and rude socket stone for a very small cross at Otley. 

 At Ripley there is a very remarkable socket stone for a cross. 

 Thus there is good reason for supposing that in this massive 

 St. Alkmund's stone we may have the socket of a standing 

 cross. There were also found at St Alkmund's, besides the 

 various stones built into the porch, two very remarkable capitals 

 of Romanesque character, and a stone showing a horse or deer 

 involved in spiral foliage. These capitals are engraved in the 

 Archaeological Journal, Vol. ii., p. 87; they cannot be found, 

 but a rubbing of a stone at York is shown on Plate XII. with 

 two similar horse-shaped or hart-shaped animals involved in a 

 similar manner in spiral foliage. Dr. Cox shows one of the 

 Romanesque capitals, and the stone with the horse or hart 

 (Vol. iv., pi. v.). I trust when next I come to Derby, I shall 

 find that the exceedingly valuable fragments from. St. Alkmund's, 

 now exposed to the weather in front of the Free Library, have 

 been carefully put under cover, and that the Derby Society has 

 rediscovered the lost fragments from St. Alkmund's, and placed 

 them also in the Museum.* It too often happens that those 

 who have the custody of stones of this character, even when 

 they recognise that they are of priceless value from their great 

 age, the skill of their design and execution, and the fact that 

 no other nation of Europe has such memorials, are disposed 

 to argue that what has lasted so well for ten or eleven hundred 



* Mr. Henry G. Stevens, of Derby, offered a set of casts of the St. 

 Alkmund's stones to the British Archaeological Association in 1845 

 (Archceological Journal, ii.), but the committee had no room for casts 

 and were obliged to decline them. These casts might be recovered. 



