A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
This last site is interesting as being close to the ancient harbour 
and just on the other side of the harbour at Irton is 
a famous cross in the churchyard, which in spite of some features 
usually put down as Celtic, or Hiberno-Saxon, must be classed as an _ 
Anglian work. The Irton cross is carved from a single block of red 
sandstone, head and shaft in one piece, 10 feet high from the pedestal. 
The carving has been all done with the chisel, without drill or pick, 
and is smooth, highly-finished work, very varied in depth. The parts 
where the pattern runs closely together are kept shallow and flattish ; 
here and there a few emphatic points are deeply hollowed, giving 
strong touches of shade and throwing the flatter parts into breadth 
and delicacy. On the panel now blank are said to have been Anglian 
runes (described under the heading of Inscriptions) ; above the panel is 
a symmetrical interlacing, and below it is a very elaborate symmetrical 
double strand interlaced. The edges bear fine scrolls of fruit, leaves 
and flowers, in the best style of Anglian art, and quite foreign to Irish 
and Scandinavian work. ‘The east side has two panels of diagonal key- 
pattern, like the fragment at Workington, and two panels of geometrical 
‘kaleidoscope’ design ; at the top is a panel of chequers, like that at 
Bewcastle, except that they are little x-shaped depressions instead of 
squares. The head has on one side a boss and ring surrounded by 
fifteen smaller bosses, and on the other side five small bosses arranged 
in a cross surrounded by a ring and framed with interlacing. A curious 
incised plait is on the ends of the cross-arms, which are free and not 
joined by a wheel ; it is like the head of Ruthwell cross, which (though 
now restored) can never have been a wheel-cross. Bewcastle and other 
Anglian crosses had probably free-armed heads, of which many still 
remain in Cumberland and the rest of northern England. 
of Ravenglass ; 
ANGLIAN AND CUMBRIAN CROSS-HEADS 
Two good examples of these free-armed Anglian heads are at 
Carlisle. One, represented only by the arms and centre from which the 
shaft and uppermost limb have been broken, is in the Fratry, and was 
found in digging the foundations of a house in the Abbey in 1857. It 
has square-ended interlacements on the ends of the arms like the Adding- 
ham and Workington fragments, and a six-petalled boss, with Anglian 
inscriptions on the arms. The other, represented only by the tips of the 
lateral arms, has angular interlacements at the arm-ends, a rather debased 
but still Anglian floral scroll on one face, and a device which is nearly 
what may be called the ‘ lorgnette’ pattern, surrounded with zigzags on 
the other face ; this was found about 1888 in making alterations at the 
Bishop of Barrow’s house in the abbey. 
The ‘lorgnette’ is represented in its full form in the head found 
in 1855, and preserved in the room over St. Catherine’s chapel in the 
cathedral. There is the usual boss in the centre of the head with a 
ring round it, making it somewhat a a magnifying glass ; and on each 
