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 A HISTORY OF LONDON in proportion to the shaft is rather a feature of crosses in Wales and the Isle of Man. The other fragment (fig. 34), from the churchyard of St. Benet Fink, belongs to a recumbent slab 5 in. thick, and originally about 23 in. across at the broader end, the preserved portion being 25Jin. long, about 21 J in. wide, and slightly tapering towards the foot. Of the carving only part of two panels with regular interlacing remains, separated by a broad band terminating in a semicircle. The whole design can, however, be satisfactorily restored from a slab 6 ft. long " found on the site of Cambridge Castle, and the former existence of two Saxon churches (St. Peter's and All Saints') within the outer bailey °^ renders it probable that the slab came from one of their burial-grounds, and was used in the foundation of the Norman castle. There can be little hesitation, therefore, in referring the London fragment, which is now in the Guildhall Museum, to the early part of the eleventh century or possibly to the tenth ; and the discovery supports the view that the burials Fia 34. — Portion of Carved Grave-slab, Churchyard of St. Benet Fink (after Lethaby) found on the site (where the Peabody statue now stands) adjoining the Royal Exchange belonged to the late Anglo-Saxon and not to the Roman period." In conclusion, mention may be made of a discovery that settles the date and origin of the covering slab found on the Roman sarcophagus at West- minster (fig. 3, p. 13). Portions of two-grave slabs, ^* found 2 ft. below the floor of Ixworth Church, Suffolk, in 1855, ^^^ ^'^'^ preserved in the abbey there, bear the same panelling filled with simple interlacing. One has the upper portion of a cross with spreading arms, which may therefore be assigned to the eleventh century, while the other shows the semicircular terminal to the central shaft that occurs on the fragment from St. Benet Fink's graveyard. " Figured in Cutts, Manual of Sepulchral Slabs and Crosses, pi. xxxiv ; sketch of restoration in Lethaby, London before the Conquest, 170, fig. 32 ; another very similar, at Milton Bryan church, Beds, is figured in Proc. Soc. Antiq. xx, 356. " Communications to Camb. Antiq. Soc. viii, 206. " The burial ground is marked on Sir Wm. Tite's plan of the New Royal Exchange (1848), and has sometimes been considered Roman. " Both figured in Bury and W. Suffolk Arch. Soc. Proc. iii, 298. Similar crosses and interlacing occur on early fonts in Bohuslan, Sweden ; see Brusewitz and Montelius, Bohusl'dnska Dopfuntar (Stockholm, 1878). 170