Page:VCH Derbyshire 1.djvu/376

 A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE little use for fixing dates or grouping specimens together. We must therefore pay special attention to any rare patterns that can be found, as, for instance, on those on the cross-shafts at Norbury; (i) the pattern composed of concentric rings and arcs of circles, and (ii) the pattern composed of Stafford knots with an additional cord interwoven with each knot. Both of these patterns occur on the crosses at Ham and Checkley, 1 Staffordshire, and the second of the two is to be seen on the fragment of a cross-shaft at Alstonfield in the same county. From the similarity of the ornament on these monuments they may be grouped together as being of the same date. I have proposed in a paper on the Norbury cross- shafts (Journ. Derb. Arch. Soc. xxv. 97) that this group shall be called the Dovedale group. We are greatly helped in our endeavour to fix the date of the Dovedale group by observing that the ring pattern already referred to is not derived from a simple plait, like nearly all of the knotwork used in Celtic and Saxon art, but is formed by the repetition of a device made of interlaced rings. Now as this particular device is to be seen on the Lewis chessmen in the British Museum, and on Norman fonts in Norfolk, it is probably of Scandinavian rather than of Celtic origin, and its occurrence on a pre-Norman monument is an indication of a date within the Viking period. I should therefore be inclined to assign a later date to the Dovedale group than to the group of which the Bakewell cross may be taken as the type. The character of the work on the monuments of the Dovedale group is, however, so good that they probably belong to the beginning rather than to the end of the Viking period, when decadence had commenced. Latest in point of age I should place the cross-shaft from St. Alkmund's, Derby, and the portion of a round pillar used as a font at Wilne. Both of these exhibit zoomorphic decoration of the same kind, which has a distinctly Scandinavian look. Besides the decorative features of the monuments their shapes are often an indication of their age. Both the round pillar-crosses and hog- backed recumbent stones of which examples are to be found in Derbyshire belong to the Viking period. The pillar-crosses are of two kinds : (i) those which are of round section for the full height of the shaft ; and (ii) those which are of round section at the bottom and of square section at the top. The second kind are the most common, and are found chiefly in Mercia and Cumberland. The hog-backed recumbent monuments are much more widely distributed, and extend into the purely Celtic parts of Great Britain. My reasons for attributing a comparatively late date to the round pillar crosses and hog-backs have been given elsewhere. Summarizing the results thus arrived at, we may now tentatively arrange the pre-Norman sculptured monuments of Derbyshire in the following order as regards their approximate age : SEVENTH CENTURY. Coped stone at VVirksworth. EIGHTH CENTURY. Crosses at Bakewell, Bradbourne, and Eyam. Fragments of cross-shafts with Anglian foliage at Bakewell. Fragment of cross-shaft at Blackwell. 1 Arch. i. 287. 288