Anglo-Saxon 'Bear Stone',

3D Model

A carved stone set into the late Anglo-Saxon section of the tower in St Helen’s Church, Skipwith, North Yorkshire. The tower was built over the foundations of an earlier Anglo-Saxon building and also incorporates Roman period stones. The Bear Stone is likely to have originally formed part of a Bishop’s or Abbot’s throne and is similar to the bird-headed carving from Heysham, now in Lancaster City Museum (see Richard Bailey’s comments in vol 9 of the online Corpus of Anglo Saxon Stone Sculpture at https://chacklepie.com/ascorpus/catvol9.php?pageNum_urls=121 ). In the major archaeological study of the St Helen’s church, Bailey identifies the indentation in the left hand side of the piece as a ‘Lewis hole’ made to fit a grappling and lifting device used from Roman times to raise heavy blocks of stone ( Archaeol.J., 165 (2008), 399-470 ).