A HISTORY OF LONDON sand, overlying gravel. Upon the surface of this sand the sculptured stone was found ; and to the north of it a rude long hollow was scooped out, dipping from south to north at an angle between i6 deg. and 20 deg., and containing a human skeleton. The skull and nearly all the bones were thrown into the excavation and thus reburied, but the femur and tibia of one leg and the other tibia were preserved. The stone slab is of friable oolite, probably from the Bath quarries, and the original dimensions were i ft. 10^ in. in width by 2 ft. 4jin. in length. The thickness at the upper end was 4 in., and the lower part, which had been roughly finished and buried for lojin. in the soil, was one inch thicker. The size of the panel containing the sculpture is i8jin. by i3Jin. ; the relief of the design was obtained by sinking the ground to a depth of barely J in., and its character is evident from the illus- tration (fig. 31). In more than one description of the animal represented, appear the terms ' antlers ' and ' claws,' which are somewhat misleading. Lappets be- hind the ears of such animals are of common occurrence in the art of northern Europe during the eighth century ; and in districts not permeated by the Carlovingian renaissance, no doubt survived into the eleventh ; while the interlaced extension of the limbs belongs to the same school of art. Other characteristic features of the period are the spiral attachment of the limbs to the trunk, the termination of one foot in a redundant head," and the so-called union-knot at the upper angles of the panel. This last motive was originally a contrivance for uniting the ends of the scroll which carried the inscription on many Scandinavian tombstones, but appears in the present case merely as an ornament, and seems to have been derived from Ireland.*^ As a parallel close enough to prove community of origin may be cited the well-known monument of King Gorm and his queen Thyra erected about the middle of the tenth century, apparently by their son Harold Blue-tooth, at Jellinge, near Veile, Jutland. The stone is still in position between the two grave-mounds supposed to have been raised over the king and queen, whose names appear in Runic characters on the stone, while an animal with interlaced bands is carved on one side, and on the other a representation of the Crucifixion, in which the cross does not appear. This last was another Irish feature adopted in Scandinavia during the Viking period." Two fragments of sculptured stone, presented to the British Museum by Mr. (afterwards Sir) A. W. Franks in 1884, have points of resemblance to the slab just described, and are known to have been found in the City of London. They evidently belonged together, constituting the slab or covering-stone of the grave, and the illustration (fig. 32) shows them as now mounted together. They were published by Dr. Forrest Browne (now bishop of Bristol) in 1885,*^ with notices of several other stone monuments of the period, all admittedly unlike the London specimens. The larger of the two measures 20 in. by 21 in., with a thickness of 8 in., and is incised on one face with a quatrefoil design evidently intended for the " This was a common practice as early as the seventh century : B. Salin, Die Aitgermanische Thier-orna- mentik, 254. " Sophus Milller, Die Thier-ornamentik im Nordcn, 1 06. Compare the Gosforth cross, early eleventh century {F.C.H. Cumberland, i, 263, 267). " Miiller, op. cit. 140 (note) ; Stephens, Runic Mon. iv, 83. " Arch. Journ. xlil, 252, pi. ii. 168
