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Sites Anne T has logged on trip number: 186 (View all trips)
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St Peter's Church (Croft-on-Tees)
Trip No.186 Entry No.1 Date Added: 12th Aug 2022
Site Type: Ancient Cross
Country: England (Yorkshire (North))
Visited: Yes on 10th Aug 2022. My rating: Condition 3 Ambience 4 Access 4
St Peter's Church (Croft-on-Tees) submitted by Anne T on 11th Aug 2022. Whilst I would class this carving, which is built into the wall just to the west of the south door, as a sheela-na-gig, the church guide (and our guide for the day) says this is "a small human figure with right arm raised over his head and left arm down across the body. One authority claims it to be a local water deity of Romano-British origin, circa 1-5 century AD. However this may be a piece of Victorian piety for it is possible to see that a part of the anatomy has been chipped out of the na...
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Log Text: St Peter's Church, Croft on Tees: The church's wedding co-ordinator kindly opened the church for us at very short notice, and acted as our guide for our brief visit. A very lovely church, right next to the River Tees. Sadly, the stone recorded on the Corpus of Anglo Saxon Stone Sculpture as Croft on Tees 01 had been moved to the Bowes Museum, and was about to be transferred to Newcastle as part of the celebrations of the Lindisfarne Gospels returning to that part of the world. This was disappointing, as this was the stone I most wanted to see.
A couple of bonuses were the additional stones built into the external fabric of the building, which we walked around to see what we could spot.
Our grand-daughter, Alice, was partly named after 'Alice in Wonderland', so it was good to be able to take a photograph of the sculpture which is said to have inspired Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat.
Preston Park Museum (Stockton on Tees)
Trip No.186 Entry No.2 Date Added: 12th Aug 2022
Site Type: Museum
Country: England (Yorkshire (North))
Visited: Yes on 10th Aug 2022. My rating: Condition 4 Ambience 4 Access 4
Preston Park Museum (Stockton on Tees) submitted by Anne T on 12th Aug 2022. This is part of an Anglo-Scandinavian marker stone. Not recorded on the Corpus of Anglo Saxon Stone Sculpture, notes from a presentation on the Kirklevington Stones by Craig Beckham and the Collections Team at the Museum, tell us: "the face of the stone depicts a soldier with an axe, shield and spear. This example may in fact be later than the Kirklevington crosses, but commemorates a Viking warrior in the same manner. The kite shaped shield and the axe are also typical of the time period".
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Log Text: Preston Park Museum (Kirklevington Stones): I'd tried to arrange a visit here a couple of months before the first pandemic lockdown hit, but the museum closed early, and it's been well over two years until I was able to rearrange the visit.
Some of the Kirklevington Stones are one display (some of the more important ones behind glass), some in the museum store. A small archaeology section, but with impressive exhibits.
Got to see the museum store, but the stones were stored on the floor under a very deep shelf, so some of them were impossible to photograph properly, which was disappointing.
I personally preferred this museum to Beamish, as there were more shops to go into in their Victorian Street, a small cafe, which wasn't too busy (most people were queued up in the cafe in the park), and small, but interesting exhibits.