The cross at Kelloe is made up of pieces now carefully joined together;
it is a very fine example. Most of these crosses have the characteristic
knot-work ornament, and many of them have human figures, crucifixions,
monsters, warriors, animals, and birds, carved upon them, the sculpture
and design being of the Anglian school. Very few of them have any
lettering. One at Chester-le-Street has EADMUND in mixed Runic and Roman
letters, but this may be an addition by a later hand. The hog-backed
stones of this period, of which some very fine specimens were discovered
at Sockburn in 1900, bear similar knot-work ornaments. In 1833 a
burial-place at Hartlepool, and in 1834 one at Monkwearmouth, were
discovered; they both yielded memorial stones, small in size, but of
great interest. A stone from the latter place, now in the British
Museum, bears the name TIDFIRTH in Runic characters. Tidfirth was the
last Bishop of Hexham, and was deposed about the year 821. The stones
found at Hartlepool are known as pillow-stones; they are almost square,
and only from 9 to 12 inches across by about 2 inches thick. Only seven
of them have been saved. They all bear a cross, sunk in some stones and
raised on others, and several of them have short inscriptions in Saxon
minuscules. One reads: "ORATE PRO EDILUINI ORATE PRO UERMUND ET
TORTHSUID."
Those effigies, or early statues, generally recumbent, and made
sometimes of wood, but more often of stone, which were placed in
churches from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, are to be found in
many places in the county, sometimes decently and carefully preserved in
the church, sometimes left to weather and decay in the churchyard, or in
the rectory garden. Among the more noticeable of them are the following:
At the west end of Staindrop Church is the "altar-tomb of alabaster,"
with an effigy of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmorland, in plate
armour, and with figures of his two wives, one on either hand. Surtees,
in his _History of Durham_, describes it as "this noble tomb, which is
in the purest style of the best age of sepulchral monuments." Its date
is probably about 1425. There is in the same church another tomb with
effigies, in wood, of the fifth Earl of Westmorland and his two wives;
it is dated 1560.
Barnard Castle Church has an effigy of a priest attired in chasuble,
stole, dalmatic, alb, and amice. The inscription is in Lombardic
lettering, and reads: "ORATE PRO AIA ROBERTI DE MORTHAM QNDM VICARII DE
GAYNFORD." This Robert de Mortham founded a chantry at Barnard Castle in
1339.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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