Find Spot record MDO30106 - Inscribed stone found at Shaftesbury Abbey, Shaftesbury

A fragment of inscribed stone, carved between circa 975 and 1050 and found on the site of Shaftesbury Abbey Church in 1902, is probably part of an inscription seen in the abbey chapter house by William of Malmesbury about 1125 AD. The stone ascribes the traditional foundation of Shaftesbury to King Alfred in 880 AD. The stone most likely derived from an important early eleventh century secular structure, most probably a stone-built gateway.

A fragment of inscribed stone, carved between circa 975 and 1050 was found on the site of the abbey church (ST 82 SE 4) in 1902 and evidently belongs to an inscription seen in the abbey chapter house by William of Malmesbury about 1125 AD. The stone ascribes the traditional foundation of Shaftesbury to King Alfred in 880 AD (see burh - (ST 82 SE 56) and Malmesbury also recorded that it had been brought from the ruins of a very old wall. From the reconstructed inscription (see illus. card), R.C.H.M. considered that the stone derived from an important early 11th century secular structure, which is unlikely to have been anything but a stone-built town wall; the most probable position for the inscription being in association with a gateway. <1>

Penn refers to the inscribed stone and its possible association with a stone gateway but does not suggest a town wall here. <2>

Full description of the inscribed stone, which is probably pre-Conquest. <3>

National Record of the Historic Environment, 206560 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

<1> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1972, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume IV (North), 56-57, Illus (Monograph). SDO99.

Local tradition, embodied in a stone inscription copied by William of Malmesbury, ascribes the foundation of the town to King Alfred in the year 880—more than a decade before the organisation of the chain of fortresses with which Alfred defended his frontiers against the Danes. A fragment of this inscription, rediscovered in 1902, shows, however, that it was carved during the period c. 975 to 1050; hence the earliest reliable reference to Shaftesbury as a borough is that of the year 926 in Athelstan's law about currency.

The Inscription seen by William of Malmesbury

In 1902 a fragment of inscribed stone was found on the site of the abbey church. (fn. 3) It has since been lost, but a rubbing is preserved in the Shaftesbury Historical Museum (Plate 58). The rubbing shows that the fragment had a maximum measurement of about 5 ins. in each direction and included part of the sinister margin, 1 in. wide, and the ends of three lines of letters; those of the middle line, the only ones fully preserved, were 2 ins. high. The letters, which read as follows,
. . . . . IT.
. . . .NIC
. . ATIO
are regular and evenly spaced, with well-marked wedge-shaped serifs. The C is square. In the N the oblique stroke joins the sinister upright well above the base. The O has two crescent strokes crossed at the top, forming a vesica. Letters of this type are used as capitals forming the opening line or phrase of a new entry in a number of late pre-conquest MSS. The forms here used may be noted in these positions in the late 10th-century Bosworth Psalter (New Paleographical Society, ser. I, plate 163), in the early 11th-century Sherborne Pontifical (ibid., plate 111), and in the late 10th-century Exeter Book of Old English Poetry (facsimile, London 1933, ff. 55 b, 65 b, 78 a). In the Shaftesbury inscription the words were separated by triangular stops. The inscription may be assigned to a date between c. 975 and c. 1050.

The fragment evidently belongs to the inscription seen in the abbey chapter house by William of Malmesbury, whose account of Shaftesbury (fn. 4) dates from 1125. His record, not an exact transcript, states that the stone had been brought from the ruins of a very old wall. The inscription may be restored thus— In the first line the initial AE was probably ligatured; the uninflected form of the name is normal on coins, with or without ligature (cf. the CNUT REX of the Newminster Register; T. D. Kendrick, Later Saxon and Viking Art, plate xviii). The dating as given by William of Malmesbury is inconsistent, since Alfred succeeded Ethelred in April 871 and his eighth year ran from April 878 to April 879. (fn. 5)

A formal inscription of this sort would be set up in connection with an important stone building; it may be compared with the inscription commemorating the dedication of the church at Jarrow (fn. 6) in 685. A secular stone building in Shaftesbury at the time in question (c. 975–1050) is unlikely to have been anything but the town wall, and the most probable position for the inscription would be in association with a tunnel gateway such as has recently been found at Cadbury (fn. 7) dating from c. 1010. Asser does indeed speak of the E. gate of Shaftesbury at an earlier period, (fn. 8) but the grant of Bradford on Avon to the nuns, as a refuge from the barbarians (fn. 9) in 1001, may imply that Shaftesbury was not fortified at that time. Domesday Book records that 80 houses out of the 257 in existence twenty years earlier, then lay waste (fn. 10) and in 1125 William of Malmesbury calls Shaftesbury a village (vicus) which had formerly been a town (urbs). (fn. 11) The combined evidence suggests that the stone defences of Shaftesbury date from the first half of the 11th century, and that the 11th-century inscription records the tradition of the foundation of the town, but not necessarily the building of the defences, by King Alfred. That the foundation took place early in the reign is borne out by Alfred's charter to the Abbey. (fn. 12) Although this is spurious or at best interpolated in the form handed down to us, the inclusion among the witnesses of Eahlfrith, Bishop of Winchester, implies the existence of an original charter bearing that prelate's name. Since Eahlfrith had been succeeded by Tunbeohrt by 877 that charter must have been granted between 871 and 877. The text of the charter, as preserved, records the presentation to the abbey of Alfred's daughter Aethelgeofu, who took the veil on account of ill health. In 877 Aethelgeofu was an infant; she was Alfred's third child and can scarcely have been born before 871. The date 887 for the foundation, given by Symeon of Durham, (fn. 13) is no more than conjecture; he repeats Asser's text verbatim and dates the passage more closely than is justified by the source.

<2> Penn, K J, 1980, Historic Towns in Dorset, 84-5 (Monograph). SWX1202.

<3> Cramp, R, 2006, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture: Vol VII. South-West England, 111-2 (Monograph). SDO17427.

Record last edited

Jul 22 2024 4:43PM