Post-medieval cross slabs
Dr Madeleine Gray
Professor of Ecclesiastical History
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of South Wales
Caerleon Campus
Newport NP18 3QT
Email:
Abstract
In England, crosses on commemorative carvings are unusual in the two centuries after the Reformation. In south-east Wales, however, there are numerous examples, in a range of styles, suggesting the work of several groups of stonemasons. A number have the IHS trigram, in the square capitals format popularised by Ignatius Loyola as the emblem of the Jesuits. Some of these memorials commemorate known recusants, but most seem to exemplify the characteristic Welsh combination of traditionalism and loyalism. There is plenty of other evidence for Welsh communities in the early modern period continuing with traditional ‘Catholic’ practices (pilgrimage, veneration of relics and wells) while still regarding themselves as members of the established church.
Some similar stones are found over the border into Herefordshire but there are very few in north and west Wales, suggesting that this was a purely local fashion.
Post-medieval cross slabs in south-east Wales: closet Catholics or stubborn traditionalists?[1]
In recent years, study of medieval commemorative carvings has moved from a focus on the major effigial monuments to consideration of ‘lesser’ monuments, incised stones and cross slabs. The studies of F. A. Greenhill considered both incised effigial monuments and the more elaborate incised crosses.[2] Lawrence Butler and Colin Gresham pioneered the study of the simpler cross slabs in the 1950s and 1960s,[3] and their work has been followed up more recently by Peter Ryder, Brian and Moira Gittos and Aleksandra McClain.[4] Nevertheless, cross slabs could be still described as the unsung heroes of medieval commemoration.
But if medieval cross slabs are the unsung heroes, post-medieval cross slabs are the unknown warriors. Nigel Llewellyn’s Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England makes brief reference to ledgerstones and cheaper forms of commemoration but cross slabs do not feature at all.[5] Butler mentions a post-Reformation cross slab of c 1600 at Baswich, Staffordshire,[6] but his studies identify a tailing-off in numbers from the end of the fourteenth century. Distribution tables in Ryder and McClain suggest a similar decline in numbers. Ryder felt that ‘one or two’ of his Northumberland cross slabs might be post-Reformation in date,[7] but that in West Yorkshire ‘[p]roduction of cross slabs ... ceased in the 16th century’.[8] The incised wall slab at Holy Trinity, Cuckfeld, East Sussex, commemorating Guy Carleton (d 1628) and his sister’s children has as part of its decoration a rather schematic anchor which is almost a cross, with the words Crux Christi Anchor Spe incised on it, as a subsidiary part of a decorative scheme including some other ‘Arminian’ iconography (a cherub and a burning heart).[9] Discussion with several Fellows has however suggested that cross slabs are assumed to be an almost entirely pre-Reformation phenomenon, with a very few exceptions.
This may be to some extent a self-fulfilling assumption: there is a strongly regional element in the typologies of medieval incised slabs of all kinds, and in the absence of identifiable inscriptions dating will always involve an element of guesswork. It does however present a problem to historians and archaeologists in south-east Wales, where clearly datable post-Reformation cross slabs are quite common. Field survey has so far identified about 150, and there are doubtless more to be found (figs 1 and 2). A recent visit to Abergavenny when furniture had been moved for building work identified an additional two and a possible third in a church which has been extensively surveyed. Brecon Cathedral has about sixty (it is difficult to give an exact figure because so much of the church is carpeted). Llanilltud Fawr (Llantwit Major, Glamorgan) has at least sixteen, plus some which may be reused medieval stones and an unknowable number beneath pews and decking. There are significant collections at churches as widely spread as Abergavenny and Llangattock-nigh-Usk (both in Monmouthshire)[10] andLlandow (Glamorgan), and smaller collections and single examples in churches and churchyards throughout the region. This is clearly too large an area for the work of one workshop; there are in fact several distinct styles, from the very plain crosses which predominate in the Vale of Glamorgan to the ornate cross heads, baroque scrolled bases and subsidiary vernacular figures of north Monmouthshire. Some of these are datable stylistically and some by their inscriptions.
It is of course possible that in some cases we are looking at medieval stones which have been recut with later inscriptions. This was my first assumption when looking at the cross slab at Llandyfaelog-fach, Breconshire, which now has an inscription commemorating a Thomas son of Watkin ab Owain who died in the second decade of the seventeenth century (part of the date is missing). The inscription is round the edge of the slab and slightly cuts into the cross head. However, the design of the cross head, with its baroque-style squared fleur-de-lys finials, is markedly different from the medieval floriated cross heads and very similar to cross heads from more securely dated seventeenth-century examples in Brecon Cathedral where the inscription is clearly part of the original design. It is more likely that the stone just west of the chancel steps in Llanilltud Fawr, which now bears the inscription ‘WILLIAM THOMAS/1602/MARGARET YORETH/THE LATE WIFE OF/MORGAN THOMAS/1625’ has been recut from a medieval original: the inscription lies awkwardly over the cross, which is a plain calvary cross with slender shafts and simple fleur-de-lys finials. The slab tapers slightly, but not enough to suggest an early date, and is probably late medieval. A stone in the churchyard at Llanfair Cilgedin, Monmouthshire, is more puzzling (fig 3). Drawn by Bradney in 1906, it has a floriated head which could be late medieval or early post-medieval.[11] Two S-shaped decorations flow out from the shaft: these again could indicate either date. The base is a cruder form of the baroque scrolled design found on seventeenth-century memorials in north Monmouthshire. The slab has clearly been reused: the inscription is inverted and reads WT W / AETATIS 78 / SEPULT 7 III NOVEMBR ... (the rest of the figures were indecipherable when Bradney saw it; the whole is now even more difficult to read). This could be a reused medieval slab but the design of the base makes it more likely that we have a post-medieval slab which has been recut with a later inscription.
Reuse of medieval cross slabs is significant in itself, as Sarah Tarlow has pointed out in the context of reused cross slabs in Orkney.[12] Some of her examples of reuse, she suggests, could be intended to preserve important memorials and offer evidence of ‘an adherence to Catholic values and practices’. In most cases, however, she concludes that those who preserved and adapted pre-Reformation memorials would not have considered themselves Catholic: rather, they were loyal but traditionalist members of the reformed church, unwilling to give up on traditions they valued.
Further confusion can be caused by the re-cutting of cross slabs which are probably post-medieval in origin. Just inside the south door at Skenfrith, Monmouthshire, is a ledger stone commemorating a Charles Edwards who died in the eighteenth century (the date seems never to have been completed). The slab has a cross head of seventeenth-century design, much more heavily worn than the inscription. It looks very much as though a seventeenth-century stone has been recut in the early eighteenth. Several of the very plain cross slabs at Llanilltud Fawr have also been recut, one as late as 1795.[13]
Ironically, some of these post-medieval memorials were included in two of the earliest studies to focus primarily on cross slabs. In an article published in the Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society in 1904, the Welsh antiquarian and polymath T H Thomas provided fairly rough line drawings of twenty-five cross slabs, most of them from Glamorgan, two from Monmouthshire and one from Hanmer in north-east Wales.[14] His interest was in the ‘Calvary’ crosses (those with stepped bases, generally assumed to have been modelled on altar crosses), though he also included drawings of a few crosses with different styles of bases. Thomas actually assumed on the basis of surviving inscriptions that most of these crosses dated from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, though many of them have subsequently been redated to the medieval period: the inscriptions are evidence of reuse. However, a number of the South Wales cross slabs in his study are clearly post-medieval, and the Hanmer example may have been so. This slab was seen by Thomas Dineley in 1684 (fig 4); Thomas seems to have redrawn it from Dineley’s sketch rather than inspecting it himself. It can no longer be found and was probably destroyed in the fire which virtually demolished Hanmer church in 1889. It was idiosyncratic in design and the decoration had clearly been recut at some point. When Dineley saw it, it bore the inscription IE 1608.[15] From Dineley’s drawing, Thomas thought the initials and date were integral to the design. they may have been a later addition.
Thomas’s study was followed up with another article in the Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society in 1911 by another architect, John Rodger.[16] Rodger cast the net rather wider than Thomas, recording several cross slabs in Breconshire, though he did not include the Hanmer example. His drawings were much more accurate and meticulously measured, and he illustrated 125 cross slabs ranging from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. Of these, over thirty are almost certainly post-medieval, and a couple more may be post-medieval or may have been recut. Many of the stones drawn by Thomas and Rodger are now more worn than they were a century ago, so their work is a valuable guide. Little or nothing has been done since to follow up the avenues opened in these two articles, and they are as a result the foundation for any desk-top survey of the subject.
The post-medieval cross slabs in both these studies are mainly from the Vale of Glamorgan and the area immediately to the west, around Margam. Between them, Rodger and Thomas identified most of the surviving slabs in that area, though there are a few more to be added to the corpus. They show at least three distinct designs, two found throughout the Vale of Glamorgan and the third to the west at Bettws and Margam. The simplest, found at Gileston, Llancarfan and Llandough near Cardiff, as well as numerous examples at Llanilltud Fawr, is a very plain four-line design, usually with a three-step calvary base, though bases range from one to four steps (fig 5). Llanilltud Fawr also has several examples of a clearly different design, a plain cross with thick arms and shaft, sometimes slightly splayed, raised panels at the sides (Thomas and Rodger describe these as ‘billets’) and a rectangular base (fig 6). This seems to have been intended to provide space for an inscription, though not all the stones actually have lettering. One of the stones in this style at Gileston, commemorating members of the Giles family who died in the early seventeenth century, has shields on the rectangular base carved with the family arms (one with cross crosslets in saltire, the other with a chevron between three crowns) (fig 7).[17] Other examples of this style can be found at Ewenny, Laleston, Llandow, Llanmaes, Llansannor, Penmark, St Brides Major and St Brides Minor, several of them with shields but none with the heraldry carved on (they were probably painted). Slabs with designs somewhere between these two, with a thick-armed cross flanked by billets but on a conventional calvary base and with the inscription round the edge of the stone, can also be found throughout the region: there are several examples at Llandow and one miniature stone commemorating a Mary Powel, who died in 1671, at Llangynwyd in the uplands of the Llynfi valley. At Bettws and further west at Margam are stones with decoration on the rectangular bases of the crosses (fig 8). These could possibly be late medieval, and the two at Margam now underlie the early seventeenth century alabaster tomb chests of the Mansel family, but the style of the crosses is very similar to other examples which are clearly post-medieval. The diversity of designs makes it clear that we are dealing with several stonemasons’ workshops offering a range of options. Where the dates on these Glamorgan slabs are legible, they are mainly from the seventeenth century. There is however one very early plain cross at Llanilltud Fawr, commemorating a Mathew Voss who died in 1534. (His age is given as 129: the first digit is carved quite clearly and seems unlikely to be a flaw in the stone.) We might here have the origin of the very plain four-line design of some of these crosses.
Both Thomas and Rodger speculated about the origins and meanings of some of the designs on these post-medieval slabs. Thomas was particularly interested in the low relief panels which he described as ‘billets’. He and Rodger both thought these might derive from the design of some very unusual triple crosses which they identified at Margam, Laleston and Llangynwyd. Rodger thought the triple crosses were reminiscent of Continental calvaries depicting Mary and John as well as the crucified Christ, but poetic evidence suggests that the Glamorgan examples were intended to represent the two thieves as well as Christ.[18] While the full-scale triple crosses are almost certainly medieval, the billets on the post-medieval ones may embody a reflection of the medieval Crucifixion scene and the importance of the good thief in the ars moriendi tradition. At Bettws, Margam and St Brides Major the billets are accompanied by small rosettes or crosses, in the angles of the cross arms or half way down the billets. These may be purely decorative but they too may have a vestigial symbolic function: the circular designs, for example, may be a reflection of the depiction of the sun and moon to either side of several medieval Crucifixion scenes.