At Bleadon, Somersetshire, "a few years ago," wrote C. Pooley in 1877,
during the restoration of the church, in removing the plaster, there
was found embedded in a recess in the east wall of the porch, the
sculptured stone head of a cross of the time of Edward III. (Fig. 89).
The side exposed, the reverse, portrays the Blessed Virgin and Child
between two donors, a man and woman, kneeling. The remarkable feature
of this cross-head is the gilding and polychrome decoration, of which
considerable traces had survived. The crucifix, on the obverse, being
turned inward to the wall, is hidden from view; but, since this
particular cross belongs to the same group as those, for example, of
Stoke-sub-Hamdon, Stringston, and Wedmore, in the same county, in
which the upper part of the figure-sculpture is pierced through from
front to back, the arms and upper limb of the cross remain clearly
visible from the reverse side.
In the churchyard of Newmarket, Flintshire (Figs. 90, 91), stands
a remarkable cross, with octagonal socket and shaft, both having
diamond-pointed stops. The shaft is 6 ft. 5 in. high, and surmounted
with a massive capital or knop. The head is tabernacled on all four
faces, but its end niches are empty. The niches of the obverse and
reverse have each a crucifixion, the one unaccompanied, the other
between Mary and John. This curious anomaly of a double yet divergent
representation in one and the same cross-head occurs also at Mitton,
Yorkshire. The cross-head at Newmarket measures 3 ft. 6 in. wide at
its widest, by 1 ft. 6 in. from front to back. The date of the work is
about the middle of the fourteenth century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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