The Scandinavian chain pattern, frequent on the stones of the North Riding, and in Cumberland, is entirely absent in manuscripts. There must have been books at Lastingham, Hackness, Gilling, and other great monasteries, but the stone-carvers did not copy them.
Base and Side of the Ormside Cup.
The Ormside cup, on the other hand, has close analogies with the two important monuments at Croft and Northallerton, which seem to be the leading examples of the finest style, from which all the rest evolve, not without influence from abroad at successive periods. It is to relief work rather than to manuscripts that we must look for the inspiration of the sculptors.
In these monuments linked together we can trace the continuation of the Viking age style during the later half of the tenth century and the early part of the eleventh centuries. The stone carver's art was reviving, stones were becoming more massive, which means that they were more skilfully quarried, the cutting is more close and varied, and on its terms the design is more decorative and artistic, though still preserving its northern character among impulses and influences from the south. But there is no room here for the Bewcastle cross or the Hovingham stone. We have an example of this period's attempt to imitate.
It is probable that the stone carving was a traditional business, began by St. Wilfrid's, and Benedict Bishop's imported masons, and carried on in a more or less independent development as it is to-day.
With the Danish invasion began a period of new influences which were not shaken off until after the Norman Conquest.
The interlaced work was abandoned in the tenth century by southern sculptors, remained the national art of the north. The Manx, Irish, and Scotch kept it long after the eleventh century, and so did the Scandinavians.
The Bewcastle cross in the Gigurd shaft of the cross at Halton in Lancashire, and if this development has been rightly described the Halton shaft is easily understood.