Visit Gilsland

The Bewcastle Cross, with its cousin at Ruthwell on the Solway coast, are probably the finest to survive from Anglo-Saxon Britain. Their style looks to Northumbria, and beyond there to Rome and Syria, rather than to Galloway and Ireland. They are likely to date from after 675 when this area (formerly known as Rheged) had come under Northumbrian sway, and when Benedict Biscop brought masons from abroad to work in building his new monastery at Monkwearmouth/Jarrow, the likely base from which the team came to carve our cross here. The Syrian link is not so surprising when we learn that many monks and craftsmen fled persecution there and went to Rome, producing 5 Popes and also a great reforming Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus, around this time.