REMAINS OF THE PRE-NORMAN PERIOD 
from its connection with the Cumbrian school may be placed early in 
the tenth century, or near the beginning of the Viking settlement. 
Later than this is the standing cross at St. Bees, in which the spirals 
have disappeared ; the debased interlacing has become dragonesque, and 
new motives of plaitwork, Irish in origin, though the interlacing is de- 
based, have been introduced, suggesting a transition-form between the 
spiral style and the Gosforth cross. 
Another transition example is seen in the standing cross in Adding- 
ham churchyard, with rude attempt at a wheel-head and ornament 
entirely spiral ; and a more advanced type is the Giant’s Thumb at Pen- 
rith, with what has been a wheel-head and both scroll work and inter- 
lacing on the shaft. This cross has been much damaged—indeed it was 
used at one time as a pillory ; but since its re-erection in 1887 the 
lower part, formerly covered by the earth in which it was sunk, betrays 
the debased spirals which did duty for scrolls, and shows that it is really 
a transition-form between the Cumbrian and Irish-Norse (Gosforth) 
school, though evidently a very fine work of its time. 
Transition from one age and style to another does not go on quite 
smoothly or along any single line. In this age there is another thread of 
development which we must trace, namely the connection between 
Cumbrian and Irish-Norse through a series of round-shafted crosses. 
Tue Rovunp-SHAFTED CRossEs 
Mr. J. Romilly Allen, F.S.A., has pointed out’ that in Cheshire and 
Staffordshire, with outlying examples in Wales (the pillar of Eliseg, 
Denbighshire) and Nottinghamshire (Stapleton cross), there is a group of - 
monuments of which the shaft is round in the lower part but square in 
section in the upper part, and he suggested a Midland origin for the 
style. We have also a number of such round-shafted crosses, of which 
one, the Gosforth cross, is very famous, though not the original from 
which the whole series was imitated; for, as Bishop Browne has 
remarked, the pillar of Eliseg bears an inscription which no one is able 
to put later than the ninth century (Archeological ‘fournal, xliv. No. 174, 
1887, p. 151), while there are many reasons for dating the Gosforth group 
early eleventh century. 
But just as north Wales is connected with Cumbrian spiral work 
through the Maen-y-chwyfan, so it is through this other development 
of round-shafted crosses. The connection of the two districts need 
not be looked for so far back as Romano-British times, for we know that 
kindred northmen settled all along the shore of the Irish Sea from 
the Dee to the Solway. 
On Solway shore at Anthorn is a thick round shaft with no flat 
panels and a free-armed head, locally said to mark the place of a battle 
with the Scots and named with another in Greenwood’s map (1823) as 
1 Archaeol. Cambrensis, 5th series, vi. 24; and Trans. Hist. Soc. of Lancashire and Cheshire, ix. new 
series, 1894. 
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