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Hogback Tombstones and the Anglo-Danish House

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

James Walton
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In a number of publications W. G. Collingwood has described the north country hogbacks and he has suggested that they were replicas in stone of the dwellings prevailing at the time among the people responsible for their erection. He was primarily concerned, however, with their development and dating, based upon the ornament employed. In this paper I have concentrated rather on the hogback as a representation of an Anglo-Danish house and its bearing on the origin of cruck construction.

The hogback is a recumbent tombstone in the form of a long, low house with a roofridge slightly arched lengthwise. Its ground plan (FIG. I, D) is bomb6 in shape, affording a plan which has only rarely been revealed by excavation. From Glendarragh, The Braaid, Isle of Man, Fleure and Dunlop have described two alignments which they consider represented the side walls of a boat-shaped house (FIG. I, A). These, they contend, were built of more durable materials to provide a stronger construction whilst the gable walls, which contained the entrances, were probably built of wattle. This is supported by the evidence of the hogbacks which show low stone ground-walls at the sides only and the walls at The Braaid are probably survivals of similar ground-walls. Fleure and Dunlop compare it to the ‘banqueting hall’ of Hofstaoir, Mývatn, in northern Iceland, which is 118 feet long and has incurved stone side walls varying from 19½ feet, at the ends, to 26 feet, in the middle, apart (FIG. I, B).

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 28 , Issue 110 , June 1954 , pp. 68 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 154

References

1 W. G. Collingwood, Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age, 1927. ‘Anglo-Saxon Sculptured Stones’, Victoria History of the County of York, vol. II, 1912, pp. 109-33.

I have accepted Collingwood’s classification and chronology throughout this paper.

2 H. J. Fleure and M. Dunlop, ‘Glendarragh Circle and Alignments, The Braaid, Isle of Man’, The Antiquaries Journal, vol. XXII, 1942, pp. 51-2.

3 Poul Norlund, Trelleborg, 1948, p. 28.

4 T. H. Turner, Domestic Architecture in England from the Conquest to the end of the Thirteenth Century, 1851, facing p. 8.

5 C. F. Innocent, The Development of English Building Construction, 1916.

6 T. H. Turner, op. cit., p. 251.

7 C. F. Innocent, op. cit., p. 184.

8 The Book of Kells (Trinity College, Dublin).

9 Ian Richmond, ‘The Irish Analogies for the Romano-British Barn Dwelling’, The Journal of Roman Studies, vol. XXII, 1932, p. 98.

10 W. G. Collingwood, op. cit., 1927, p. 167.

11 For descriptions of cruck construction see :—S. O. Addy, The Evolution of the English House, 1910 ; C. F. Innocent, op. cit. ; James Walton, Homesteads of the Yorkshire Dales, 1947. ‘Cruck-framed Buildings in Yorkshire’, Yorks. Arch. Journ., 1948, pp. 49-66. ‘The Development of the Cruck Framework’, ANTIQUITY, 1948, pp. 179-89 ; Cyril Fox and Lord Raglan, Monmouthshire Houses, Part 1, 1951 ; Iorwerth C. Peate, The Welsh House, 1940.

12 W. G. Collingwood, ‘Angles, Danes and Norse in the District of Huddersfield’ (Tolson Memorial Museum Handbook No. 2), 1929, p. 54.

13 Sigurd Erixon, ‘Geschichte und heutige Aufgaben der Bauernhausforschung’, in Funkenberg : Haus und Hof im nordischen Raum, II Band, 1937.

14 W. Lindner, Das niedersächsische Bauernhaus in Deutschland und Holland, 1912 ; A. Stieren, ‘Eine germanische Siedlung in Westick bei Kamen, Kr. Unna, Westf., Diebisher ergrabenen Bauten der Siediung’, Westfalen, 1936.

15 Verbal communication from van Giffen to A. Stieren.

16 Cl. V. Trefois, in Folk, Zeitschrift des Internationalen Verbandes für Volksforschung, 1, Heft, 1937.

17 C. F. Innocent, op. cit.

18 W. G. Collingwood, op. cit., 1929, p. 8.

19 J. N. L. Myres, ‘The Adventus Saxonum’, Aspects of Archaeology in Britain and Beyond, 1951, pp. 235-6.

20 James Walton, op. cit., 1948, p. 188.

21 O. G. S. Crawford, review of Eilert Ekwall : ‘The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names’, ANTIQUITY, 1936, p. 493.