A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
less ingenious in the following-out of the strands through a wonderful 
cobweb maze. Beneath this is a beast with its head turned over its 
back, but ruder and wilder than the similarly posed creatures at Dacre 
and Gosforth. 
Still wilder are those on the red shaft at Cross Canonby, beasts 
writhing and trying to bite themselves in two. One edge of this piece 
has a wildly twisted dragon, the other edge a ring-plait, and the reverse 
a fret—no very definite sign of date, though the cable-moulding links it 
to the late pre-Norman types and distinguishes it from the earliest 
Anglian. 
A similar treatment of monsters appears on a shaft at Workington 
church, with angular frets on the sides, bird-like creatures on one edge 
and a kind of snake on the other. 
Tue DRAGoNESQUE SERIES 
Snakes interlaced have already been noticed on the Gosforth crosses 
and hogbacks, the St. Bees standing cross, and the Plumbland hogback, 
and now we have a series in which this characteristic motive of Irish and 
Scandinavian work is very distinctly shown, along with features different 
from the Gosforth style. 
At St. John’s, Beckermet, there is a group of stones preserved in 
the church which must have formed parts of three very picturesque 
crosses. ‘The main material of ornament in all is a double-strap inter- 
lacing of a rather irregular design, recalling the Aspatria standing cross, 
but interspersed with the conventional Irish and Norse dragon-heads. 
In two of these crosses there are geometrical patterns with curled ends 
and pellets filling the gaps, which suggest a survival of the spiral school ; 
these, like the Penrith and Dacre examples, being transition-types between 
the Cumbrian and Gosforth styles. One of them is remarkable for a 
clever use of the drill to punctuate the intersections of the plaits, as in 
the braid on the north side of Gosforth standing cross and on the 
‘saint’s tomb.’ ‘There is a fragment of a still later shaft with angular 
interlacing, and cable-moulding which does not appear in the three 
others. The socket-stone no doubt belongs to one of the three. 
At Haile there are fragments of dragonesque shafts, figured by 
Canon Knowles (in Trans. Cumb. and West. Ant. and Arch. Soc. vol. iii. 
1877). 
The head built into High Aikton farm and noticed there by the 
Rev. Richard Taylor must have come from Bromfield church, though 
it is of a different stone from the interlaced cross already described. In 
the place of the boss it has a dragon’s head with a ring through the 
snout—an adaptation of the idea we have seen carried out at Gosforth, 
where the serpents attack the cross-head. 
The socket-stone in the tower of Brigham church is a good example 
of this dragonesque style. There is also a red sandstone wheel-head, 
with three fragments of interlacing of this age; one of them of white 
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