In 873 the Viking Great Army took winter quarters at the Anglo-Saxon monastery of Repton in the heart of Mercia. Excavations 1974–88 found their D-shaped earthwork on the river bank, incorporated in the stone church. Burials of Viking type were made at the east end of the church, and an existing building was cut down and converted into the chamber of a burial mound containing at least 249 individuals. Here is a first account of the evidence for the Vikings at Repton in and after the campaigning season of 873-4.
In August 1979 a large sculptured stone was discovered, broken and upside down in a pit immediately outside the eastern window of the Anglo-Saxon crypt of the church of St Wystan at Repton in Derbyshire (pl. V). The scenes depicted on the two surviving faces of the stone are without direct parallel in Anglo-Saxon sculpture and have so far eluded definitive interpretation. The purpose of the present article is to place on record a detailed description of the stone, and some preliminary thoughts on its date and possible significance, in the hope that wider discussion may lead to a more satisfactory understanding of what must be, on any judgement, one of the more important surviving examples of pre-Conquest sculpture.
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