Cross-head from Berrow Church, Somerset

Extract

The little church of Berrow, which lies behind the sandhills on the Somerset coast of the Bristol Channel a few miles north of Burnham, has a nave, chancel, and south aisle only. Its walls were besmeared with a thick coat of modern plaster, on the removal of which a niche of considerable dimensions was found in the centre of the north wall (fig. 1). Its projecting ornaments had been stripped off and its cavity built up flush with the general wall line with brickwork on edge that could not have been much later than the Commonwealth. On the removal of these bricks a tabernacle cross-head was found behind them. It was in eleven fragments; one large main piece comprising all the figures, seven small ones, whose fractures fitted on exactly, and which I have put back into their proper positions, and three others belonging to the lost upper part, which cannot be replaced. All are in Ham Hill stone. In addition to these there were inserted in the niche many fragments of carved work in a different stone, some of which may have been parts of the niche itself or, more possibly, of a reredos, but there is no certainty. On visiting the church to examine and report on these fragments I naturally set on foot a search for the cross-base, and was soon rewarded. Some 30 ft. south of the porch was a fragment of an octagonal shaft, II in. in diameter, and projecting some 9 in. above the ground, which rises sharply at this point from the level of the porch entrance.