Some Romano-British Sculptures from Ancaster and Wilsford, Lincolnshire

Extract

The purpose of this paper is to record three stones recently brought to my attention. The first was found about twenty years ago by Mr. Benjamin Wyles when digging a dyke in a field called the Long Liner near Slate House Farm, in the parish of Wilsford near Grantham. It is preserved in Wilsford church and is published by the kind permission of the Rector, the Rev. J. D. Smart. The other two, which are fragmentary, were found in the core of the north-east buttress of the east of Ancaster church in the course of reconstruction during August 1960. The wall, which is of the late twelfth century with flat plain buttresses, has had a fourteenth century window inserted into it, and has been repaired and refaced possibly at same time as the insertion of the window. There remain traces of the jamb-shafts and arch-springing of the original triple twelfth-century window. The wall developed serious settlement-cracks, and these were bonded by inserting concrete tie-beams behind the face of the wall, and at the same time grouting the loose core. Both stones are likely to have been built into the buttress in the twelfth century. I am indebted to Mr. L. H. Bond, L.R.I.B.A., for bringing them and the above facts to my notice, and to the Rev. L. W. B. Bacon, Vicar of Ancaster, for permission to publish.