While the general form of the circle-headed cross can be seen to extend geographically around the Irish Sea littoral, from Anglesey via north-west England to the Solway Firth, regional groupings have been recognised since Bu’Lock’s work (1959). These include Cheshire and Cumbria groups, the former having additional pellets in the spandrels of the cross while the latter always have pierced spandrels. The circles are also decorated differently: pellets and step patterns in the Cheshire group and plait work in the Cumbria group, but they share in common the projecting square bosses outside the ring of the circle that signify the projecting arms of the cross within.
The outliers in Yorkshire and in Wales show combinations of these traits demonstrating that both subgroups were likely to have been carved in roughly the same period (Bailey 1980, pp. 177-181). In his more recent discussion of the Cheshire Group, Bailey adds another example related to this group from Walton on the Hill (formerly Lancashire, now Merseyside) and also includes the three related examples from Flintshire which in the immediate pre-conquest period was administratively part of Cheshire (Bailey 2010, pp. 31-33). These examples from further afield, however, differ in detail from the main group confined to the Wirral and Chester.
Also added to Bailey’s discussion are examples of similar crosses at Maughold on the Isle of Man and other related crosses at various sites in Ireland; these are linked more to the Cumbrian rather than the Cheshire sub-group (ibid., pp. 32-33). Overall, these new discoveries and parallels only further add to the impression of the group as one strongly focused on Viking-period connections across the Irish Sea, with the Yorkshire outlier providing evidence of the important link with the Viking community based in York.
It is possible to speculate that the Chester and Wirral groups originated in a sculptural team based in Chester, and perhaps at St. John’s where the largest group of stones is to be found. In favour of St. John’s as a centre for carving is the proximity of a quarry and the presence of an apparently unfinished cross, St. John 6 (Bailey 2010, pp. 33 and 67). Links between the St. John’s group and those in Neston can be seen in the interlace patterns on St. John Stone 3C and Neston Stone 4C, and in the demonstration that the circle heads are of the same diameter at both sites, suggesting layouts of the designs in the same fashion using the same tools.
Finally, the identification of at least one figural group at St John’s, Fragment 8, even if the subject is in dispute, provides another important link (Bailey 2010, p. 68). One major difference can be seen in the relative thicknesses of the circle-headed crosses: those at St John’s are far more substantial than those at Neston but this presumably relates to differences in the bedding layers within each quarry from which the stones were taken. The locations of these are unknown, but both are now identified as from the Bunter (Chester Pebble Beds) sandstone formation (Bristow 2010, pp. 13-17, Figure 5).
World History
