This evening, my theme is the Nunburnholme Cross, one of many such ancient carved crosses I encounter on my travels around Scotland and England. More on this below. First an update on today:

Glasgow Weather: Bright, dry but very cold with temperature at or below freezing for most of the day.

Tour Arranging: Very busy with a whole range of new tour enquiries, which is nice. Spent more time adding micro detail to a 2 week round Britain self-drive tour which I am arranging.

Ancestry Research: Posted information on Thomson family history to my separate GlasgowAncestry blog. Interestingly, one of the family actually died in the Chilean seaport of Valparaiso.

Nunburnholme Cross: Now for the interesting bit! This is a stone cross with carvings on all four sides straddling the late Saxon, Viking and Norman periods and as such is of great antiquity and interest. It was discovered during 1873 building work in the church of the same name, it was incorporated into the church porch but subsequently damaged by the iron fittings which held it in place. It was effectively cut in two but reconstructed the wrong way round. Very briefly:

• Two sides are Late Saxon with focus on the Virgin Mary and Christ. See image above.
  
• One side appears to be of Viking era date and may depict a local Viking lord plus a scene form the Norse Sigurd story which features a dragon .
• The remaining side is a mixture of both Viking and Norman.

A video clip of the Cross can be found here. Fascinating!

Labels: Historic Churches Yorkshire

posted by Nigel Cole @ 12:54 PM