On Fragments of Saxon Cross Shaft, and Silver Ornament. 231 



The largest piece measures 1ft. x 1ft. OMn. on the face. It is 

 plainly part of one face of a rectangular stone belonging to a cross 

 shaft of pre-Norman age. It was apparently about a foot square 

 in section. On one edge part of the flat fillet or border in which 

 the panels of the cross were enclosed, remains — -and on this side of 

 the stone a very small portion of the ornament which formed the 

 side panel is visible, apparently similar in character to that on the 

 face. The opposite side has lost its surface, and the stone has been 

 broken through about 6in. from the front face. The surface of 

 the carving is a good deal pitted and worn, showing that it was 

 exposed to the weather for some time. The pattern is scroll work 

 of conventionalised vine branches, and bunches of grapes ; the 

 stems having in all cases the central line running down them, so 

 characteristic of Saxon work. Of this stem and leaf ornament only 

 two examples have hitherto been known in Wilts — the panels on 

 the piers of the arch at Britford and the coped grave slab at 

 Eamsbury — both of which are illustrated in vol. xxvii., p. 65. The 

 Britford example has leaves and bunches of grapes, but in the 

 arrow-head shape of the leaves the Eamsbury grave slab comes 

 nearest to the Minety pattern ; indeed, the two might very well 

 have been carved by the same hand, though the Eamsbury slab 

 has only leaves and no grapes, and the pattern is more regular. 

 Other cross shafts in the North of England have the same con- 

 ventional leaf, but none that I know of resemble the Minety stone 

 so closely as the Wiltshire examples mentioned above. 



The middle-sized stone is a fragment of, apparently, another 

 shaft stone of about the same dimensions as the other. The carved 

 faoe measures 11 x oj inches, and on the end of the fragment, 

 which is 1ft. deep, is a faint trace — an inch long — of a bit of stem 

 which formed part of the opposite face. The pattern shows no 

 trace of any leaf, and is apparently different from that of the 

 larger stone. 



The smaller piece — 8 x 4 inches — shows a stem and leaf of 

 precisely the same character as the pattern of the large stone. 

 Indeed this may well be a fragment of the same stone. 



The material of all three stones is a rather coarse hard oolite, the 



VOL. XXX. NO. XCI. Q 



