The Dacre Bears are 4 carved sandstone blocks arranged in the graveyard to correspond with the 4 corners of St Andrew’s Church, Dacre, Cumbria. Dating unknown and surmised to be pre-Saxon or more likely medieval. In 1890, Richard Ferguson, antiquarian and a founder of the Cumberland and Westmorland Archaeological and Antiquarian Society, proposed a fanciful explanation. He believed the bears told a humorous story in four stages. Bear sculpture 4 has a satisfied look on its face as if it has eaten the cat creature seen in the previous statues. There is also small hollow on it top. This carving, however, has a mane and the tail of a lion and suggests the other sculptures could have been also lions executed in a more crude manner.
Photographs taken August 2020. Model best viewed in matcap.
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