This post addresses the distinctive 10th-early 12th-century cross-carved pillar now situated inside the church of St Patrick, Llanbadrig, Anglesey. Professor Nancy Edwards describes it as her stone AN10 (Edwards 2013: 156-157): one of 59 early medieval monuments recorded for her corpus from Ynys Mon.

This is the companion post to my earlier discussion of the topography and history of the church and its churchyard from 2017 when I was unable to access the interior of the church to view the monument.

137cm high, 32cm (max) in diameter, the rear side is not visible since it is on display against the interior western wall of the nave. The stone was of a type that outcrops in north-east Anglesey, but this might have derived from a glacial erratic.

The incised decoration compared an uneven circle containing a cruciform shape created by two interlocking interlace loops with a square depresssion at the centre of the stone, which Edwards speculates might be a later addition.

Below and separate from the circle is a vertical line with, on either side, a horizontal loop and additional strand running from the intersection of the loops and vertical stem.

The simple ornament might reference a flabellum (liturgical fan), or else it is another cross motif. These are both ideas are postulated by Edwards, although the guide book suggests a further possible interpretation: as a fish as ‘icthus’ a Christian acrostic and a palm tree symbolising the Resurrection (Starkey nd.). The flabellum interpretation at least has precedent elsewhere on medieval carved stone monuments from Wales. Certainly, there is no fish here I can spot, and I’m not sure how we infer a ‘palm tree’ so precisely from this crude inscription without further parallels.

The dating of this monument by Edwards is more precise that Nash-Williams who had postulated a broader 7th-11th century date range, noting similarities to the cross-carved stone AN3 from Cerrig Ceinwen dated to the 11th or early 12th century.

Edwards (2013: 73) notes that cross-carved pillars are relatively rare in North Wales and its close-circut pattern finds parallels in both the aforementioned Cerrig Ceinwen 1 (AN3) and Penmon 3 (AN53). It might have been a grave marker or else, given the possible interpretation of a flabellum it might have ‘functioned as a focus or marker on the site’ (Edwards 2013: 157).

This is the solitary and mutable evidence of an early medieval origins for this striking cliff-top church and given it is no longer in context and lacks precise and detailed ornamentation or any inscription, it is difficult to say more about its function and significance. Still, I do wonder if the central hole, contemporary with the rest of the decoration or later, hints at its possible role as crude sundial, with the lower decoration marking the passage of the sun (and no, this isn’t very convincing).

That speculation aside, we can consider its significance in its current placement for the church’s identity – as a locus of memory. This is because it is now displayed framed by the earliest historic gravestones of the 17th and 18th century retrieved and displayed inside the church as part of a selection of ‘spolia’ speaking to the church’s deep past significance as a place of worship and memory.

Edwards, N. 2013. A Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales. Volume III: North Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Starkey, N. nd. Ancient Walls, Eternal God: A History of ‘the Chapel of the Blessed Patrick at Cemaes’. Bro Padrig Ministry Area.