Copt Howe forum 5 room
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Copt Howe

For Jeff

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Hob H
Hob Sep 18, 2003 23:56:31
Replying to FourWinds

If not a bullaun, I'd say it's very unlikely to be a preaching cross socket. At 10cm deep, 10cm wide hole isn't going to support much of a cross with a relatively small mass of stone around the hole.
There's such preaching cross socket at the holystone

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/browse.php?site_id=1791#post-17363

and though Iv'e never found it, Iv'e had it described by the owner as rectangular with a hole right the way through. If that's what preaching cross sockets (What an unwieldy term) look like then it must rule out both the NYM one and the Copt howe one as preachingcrossockets. So what are they? Mortar and pestle would surely be the bookies favourite in the absence of any other theories.

Pre-emptive derisory snorts to any suggestion of plinths for stone crosses.

F FourWinds
FourWinds Sep 19, 2003 07:36:02
Replying to Hob

The Copt Howe one is almost certainly a bullaun (obviously without actually seeing it first hand I can't say for sure, but it looks quite classical)

The smaller one fitz showed us is probably the Neolithic fore runner, which are very rare indeed. In fact they are so rare no one's really acknowleedged tham yet and still date bullaun as Bronze Age onwards. This one is rough and so could be a pestle rather than a water collecting bullaun, which are nearly always hemispherical. I know of one conical one ...

There are a lot of theories out there, but no one has done a proper study of them yet. I'm trying to get my head around them, but with many being moved to church yards it makes it very hard. And then you discover that there are over 100 on Gottland and 'some' in Lithuania and one in Cumbria ... oh hum. I know of a priest in Gottland who's cataloging all the ones there, when he's finished I might go over and see them ( a fine excuse to go there and see all the other wonders I'd say :-)

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