The socket of the Great Grimsby churchyard cross (Fig. [49]) may be earlier still, although the stem or shaft itself might be somewhat later, perhaps about the middle of the thirteenth century. On plan the stem consists of four engaged shafts, each with a keel-mould on its outermost projection. The step is 3 ft. 8 in. square by 9 in. high. Next is a socket, 2 ft. 7 in. square on plan, consisting of two stages, the lower having a trefoiled arcade on each of its four sides, the upper one octagonal, with mouldings. The shaft is 6 ft. 2 in. high, including the capital. The total height is 10 ft. 3 in.
The village cross at Harringworth, Northamptonshire, has, not unlike the last example, a shaft composed of a cluster of eight engaged columns. It is apparently of late thirteenth-century date.
Two Oxfordshire examples, both of about the same date, 1290, viz., the churchyard cross at Yarnton (Figs. [51] and [52]) and the market cross at Eynsham (Fig. [50]), are adorned with sculpture, notably with canopied figures in low relief surrounding the foot of the shaft. Both shafts are much weather-worn, and that of Yarnton has lost its upper half, but the design of the two crosses appears to have been very similar. Yarnton cross stands upon two circular steps, the lower one of which has a diameter of about 6 ft. 9 in. or 7 ft. The socket has a circular plinth cut out of the same block of stone, and is on plan a quatrefoil of four circles, with the corners of a smaller square occupying the inner angles. The moulded capping is also cut in the same block. On each of the four semicircular faces is a niche incised with a figure in armour, kneeling, except on the eastern face, which exhibits a figure reclining somewhat in the familiar "Dying Gaul" attitude. The figure on the south face has a shield on the left arm. The bottom of the shaft is square on plan, with beaded angles, while the other part is on plan a circle, surrounded by four smaller engaged circles, or segments of circles. The figures round the shaft are four saints, now too much worn to be identified, under steep gables, with crockets. The cross at Eynsham differs from that at Yarnton more in the socket than in any other part. The Eynsham socket is a square block, with a figure sculptured at each angle, and gabled panels between. The upper part of the shaft is complete, and shows what must have been the form of the portion now wanting from Yarnton cross.
Another instance of an ornamented shaft is that of Mitchel Troy (Fig. [57]). There the stem, a monolith of reddish sandstone, about 1 ft. by 8 in. on plan at the foot, tapers to about half the above dimensions at the point where it is broken off, at a height of about 11 ft. The angles are chamfered, and the chamfers are ornamented with ball-flowers alternating with shields, sixteen ball-flowers on each chamfer. The date of this cross is the fourteenth century. Two Northamptonshire crosses, those of Higham Ferrers (c. 1320) and Irthlingborough (c. 1280) respectively (Figs. [55] and [56]), are ornamented with sculptured decorations throughout the whole height of the shaft. At Ashton-under-Hill, Gloucestershire, the face of the shaft of the cross, about a third of the distance up from the bottom, is ornamented with a scutcheon. A certain number of Somersetshire crosses has a figure under a niche on one side of the shaft. In cases where, as at Burton St David, Broadway, Holford, Montacute, and Wiveliscombe, the niche and figure are sunk into the body of the monolith itself, there can scarcely be any objection to the device. But where, on the contrary, the statue, set on a bracket, stands prominently forward beyond the face of the shaft, the effect is anything but happy. For then the shaft looks so weighted down in one direction as almost to overbalance. The crosses at Bishop's Lydeard (Fig. [20]) and Crowcombe (Fig. [118]) are particularly exaggerated instances in point; others only less marked being the crosses at Drayton (Fig. [54]), Fitzhead, Heathfield, Hinton St George, and Horsington (Fig. [53]). But this peculiarity is not confined to Somersetshire. Thus, at Stalbridge, Dorsetshire (Fig. [58]), a conspicuous statue and niche occur on one side of the shaft, while at Bradford Abbas, in the same county, the churchyard cross, though much decayed, affords unmistakable traces of having had a statue sculptured on each of the four sides of the shaft. A similar arrangement is to be found in Langley Abbey cross, Norfolk.
46. ROTHERSTHORP, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
HEAD OF CROSS
The knop, though richly sculptured, is rarely the pronounced and distinctive feature that it is at Maughold (Figs. [86], [87]), St Donat's (Figs. [108], [109]), and Sherburn-in-Elmet (Fig. [113]), or in the so-called Ravenspurne cross, a monument now standing at Hedon, Yorkshire (Fig. [79]). The chamfers of its shaft have traces of figures about midway, and the head is large and imposing, but too ill-defined for the subject to be identified. It has, however, been described as having "curious sculptured emblems of our Lord and the Blessed Virgin Mary." The cross is said to have been erected to commemorate the landing of Henry IV. in 1399 at Ravenspur, near Spurn Head, in the East Riding. Edward IV. also landed there in 1471. Ravenspur was a well-known seaport in former times, but its site is now completely submerged. The cross stood on the seashore at Kilnsea until 1818, when it was removed further inland, for safety from the encroaching sea. It was eventually set up in the town of Hedon.
Usually the knop is reduced to a mere bead, or at any rate is nothing more prominent than the expanding cove beneath the actual head, as at Ampney Crucis, Derwen, and in the two crosses at Cricklade. A factor of immense importance in preserving the organic coherence between shaft and head (wherever the latter takes the form of a cross) is that the lines of the shaft below the knop and of the lower limb of the cross above the knop, should be absolutely continuous, as though passing through, but not interrupted by, the knop. This requisite is satisfactorily exemplified by two very fine Lincolnshire specimens, viz., the well proportioned cross at Somersby (Fig. [81]), and one, now at Keyingham, Yorkshire (Fig. [80]), known, from the name of him who set it up there, as the Owst cross, since the exact place from which it originally came in Lincolnshire has not been recorded. In both these instances, the handsome knop, moulded and embattled, is but a surrounding band or ring, which occasions no sort of break in the composition, nor interferes at all with the even trend of its upward lines. At Somersby the motif of the crenellated knop is admirably followed up in the battlements of the gabled roof over the head of the crucifix. The shaft is octagonal, and the cross stands altogether 15 ft. high.