Introduction

For those studying the material culture of early Christian Anglo-Saxon England, it is well established that the large-scale stone monuments set up in the landscape between the eighth and ninth centuries were an ecclesiastical construct (e.g. Bailey 1980, 81–2; 1996a, 23–41). As such, they can be considered as much a part of the public display of the presence of the Church in the land as the utilization of stone for church buildings, and have clearly been recognized as such by generations of scholars, although the exact nature of their function is still a topic for debate. Nevertheless, while they may be considered less prominent features in the landscape than large-scale buildings, in their original form and setting the stone monuments, whether crosses, shafts, obelisks or columns, were undoubtedly intended, at a very primary level, to impress all who encountered them.

Being constructed of the permanent medium of stone, many being brightly colored with paint and inset with paste glass and metal, it is hard to underestimate the impact they would have had in the Anglo-Saxon landscape – whether their setting was that of the stone-built ecclesiastical complex or more isolated surroundings, as perhaps at Bewcastle, Cumbria. In such instances, however, current physical isolation can be misleading; here (as at Ilkley, Yorkshire), the backdrop for the monument was that of the ruined, but still upstanding, Roman fort, a structure that would undoubtedly have provided an added dimension to the setting of the monument, functioning as a physical manifestation of the old imperium that, with the erection of the Anglo-Saxon monument, was being appropriated and redefined by the highly visible and permanent expression of the establishment of the Church in Anglo-Saxon England (Bailey 1996a, 5–11; 1996b, 32–6; Hawkes 1999a, 213–15; 1999b, 405; forthcoming 2003a; forthcoming 2003b).