Pre-Norman Stone Crosses in the British Isles

Near the Nottinghamshire-Leicestershire border stands the village of Hickling. At one end of the village is the pleasant Parish Church, dedicated to St. Luke, while perversely, the nonconformist chapel is rather more central. On the day that I visited, the main activity in the village was a jumble sale taking place in the Village Hall. When I arrived at the church, I met another person who was photographing the church, though his interest was in the ornate ironwork on the mediaeval door.

St. Luke's Church, Hickling, is a delightful village church set in a well-kept churchyard.
November 2000.

Inside the chancel of the church there are two grave-lids, both mounted on small blocks to lift them clear of the mediaeval tiled floor. The more weather-beaten of these, to the right, is actually five centuries or so younger than the one on the left, which owes its excellent state of preservation to the fact that it lay long buried in the churchyard, only coming to light in the 1820's, since when it has been on display in the church.

This grave-lid is unique (well, they all are, aren't they, but this one is of a unique type). The main feature on the slab is the cross whose arms extend the length and breadth of the slab. The cross is surrounded by plaited carvings and carvings of mythical beasts, and at either end of the slab is carved a muzzled bear. The slab has recently been restored, and now the carvings stand out clearly with a freshness that belies the 1,000+ year age of this artefact. The person buried beneath it must have been a very prominent citizen indeed to merit such a sumptuous tomb cover.

Previously mounted vertically in the church, this grave-slab suffered cracking.
It has now been restored, and stands on blocks on the medieval tiles of the chancel floor..

The elements present on the grave-lid are thus comparable to what one might expect to find on some Viking hog-back tomb lids, but the shape of this particular artefact is completely different from the much taller hog-backs. It is this paradoxical combination of features that make this item unique.

The style of the carving on the grave-lid has much in common with the "Jellinge" style, which Collingwood described as "long and reptile-like animals, drawn with double outline and curling among the twists of their own tails", which seems a very apt description of the beast shown above. Whilst there are stylistic similarities, though, the shapes of the particular creatures on this monument have been dictated by the overall structure of the designs, and these are represented with a longer horizontal axis, whilst those appearing on crosses tend to be elongated in the vertical direction (as opposed to being shown sideways, for example.)

Each end of the grave-lid has a muzzled bear carved on it
(picture enhanced to reveal detail)

As already hinted at, there are many other reasons to visit this church - as well as the medieval features mentioned, there is a monumental brass in the church and there are other graveyard monuments of interest, including a mediaeval "tree-of-life" grave lid and a memorial plaque to Fred Warner, who left this village to seek his fortune in the Americas, and eventually became Governor of the State of Michigan.

St. Luke's Church is somewhat north of the centre of Hickling.
Hickling village is not well-signposted from the A606.

Nunnington: The cross fragments were not on display when I last visited the church. I do not know their present whereabouts.

* The Ordnance Survey National Grid Reference (and corresponding Latitude/Longitude) given at the top of the pages describing individual sites usually refer to the location of the closest or most prominent entrance to the site where the monument is to be found - e.g. a gate into a churchyard. For monuments located in open country, or at a significant distance from the site entrance as just defined, the co-ordinates usually refer to the exact location of the monument.
Please allow for a small error in the co-ordinates of up to a couple of dozen metres.

Thanks to the people at streetmap.co.uk, if you click on the Grid References in the magenta boxes on the site pages,
you'll see an extract from the relevant Ordnance Survey 1:50000 Landranger map!

As the official mapping agency of the United Kingdom Government, the Ordnance Survey produces the definitive maps of the country. They contain a wealth of information.
For more details, visit www,ordnancesurvey.co.uk/leisure

Click here if you need an explanation of the terminology on these pages

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Click to go to Pre-Norman crosses in:	England	the island of Ireland	the Isle of Man	Scotland	Wales	Read about the Saints
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Anglo-Danish sites
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