Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/90

70 Martin's-le-Grand, impressed with the letters The initials  probably indicate the name of the manufacturer, the letters  the place of manufacture, Londinium, as the  on the third brass coins of Constantine the Great has been thought by numismatists to mark London as the place of mintage. This brick was exhibited by Mr. J. W. Burgon, and others similarly stamped have, we believe, been found in the soil of London.

Mr. J. O. Westwood exhibited drawings of two remarkable crosses. One represented, in full dimensions, the west side of the Great Cross now standing by the road side in the village of Carew, Pembrokeshire; it has lately been placed on a solid stone foundation, and as the adjoining road has been lowered, and is rather narrow, the cross appears quite gigantic. Mr. Westwood stated that the east side of this monument had been inaccurately figured by Fenton and Donovan, but that he could not learn that the west side had ever been represented. The letters of the inscription are incised, but the patterns are in relief. The space on the right of the inscription has never been inscribed. The ornament on the summit of the cross is defaced on the west side, but appears, from a slight portion remaining, to have been of an interlaced ribbon pattern: on the east side, it is inscribed with a cross, each limb being formed of three incised lines.

The other drawing represented, also of the full size, the east side of the Great Cross at Nevern, which, with the kind assistance of the Rev. I. Jones, Mr. Westwood had been enabled to rub and delineate on all its sides, which are equally ornamented. The east, south, and north sides have not been figured: the inscription, however, is given in Gibson's and Gough's Camden, but unexplained. The west side also presents an inscription within a narrow central fascia. The errors in some of the patterns, as represented in the annexed cut, are rather curious, and shew the manner in which the workman executed his design. Mr. Westwood observed that these crosses exhibited only two of the principal types, characteristic of ancient British and Irish work: the spiral pattern and the interlaced dragon design being never found in Wales, where, also, all the crosses, unlike those of Iona, the Isle of Man, and Ireland, are almost invariably destitute of figures. It is extremely difficult to assign a precise date to these two crosses, either with reference to the very unintelligible inscriptions upon them, or the style of their ornamental work, because it is well known, that in places but little influenced by external circumstances, the same conventional forms have subsisted for many centuries: as, for instance, in Ireland, where the hand-writing of the fourteenth or fifteenth century is very similar to that of the eighth or ninth, or, to approach more closely to the point in question, in the isles on the west of Scotland, where the crosses retained till a very late period their primitive style of art. However, as there is so near a resemblance between the work of these two crosses, and that on some of the stones in South Wales, which can be well