The Nevern Celtic Cross monolith

 The High Cross at Nevern (usually referred to as the Nevern Celtic Cross) stands just a few feet from the church wall, in the same churchyard as the famous bleeding yew trees. It's the most famous and spectacular Celtic Cross in Wales, standing almost 13 feet high, with wonderfully intricate carvings of Celtic motifs on all four faces.  Each face has four panels.  The wheelhead at the top of the cross (with almost identical carvings front and back) is made from a lump of sandstone, and it's fitted onto the shaft with a mortise and tenon joint.  The "fit" is not at all perfect, leading some to conclude that it was made somewhere else, by different craftsmen who may not have intended it to have been perched on a tall pillar. Both parts are though to have been crafted in the tenth or eleventh century AD -- ie around the time that the first "Normanised church" was built on this site.

There's an old legend relating to the wheelhead.  It says that St David was carrying the mighty stone on his back from St Davids to Llanddewi Brefi, and stopped for a rest at Nevern.  The stone was then known as "David's stone".  Anyway, at Nevern his old friend Brynach chided David for carrying around what was simply a piece of self-glorification, and as a result David repented and left the stone behind.  Brynach was delighted, and so the stone remained at Nevern until it was incorporated into the Celtic Cross 400 years later. So that suggests much greater antiquity for the wheelhead, at least -- if this sort of mythology has any value at all...........

The shaft or pillar is the really interesting thing.  It's made of grey-blue unspotted dolerite, and is slightly bent, and there are signs that it has been shaped or trimmed near its top prior to the carving of the motifs.  But its length is staggering.  Colt Hoare recounted that there was, some time in the 1800's,  a proposal that it should be moved to a position further away from the church wall, and a workman dug down seven feet without hitting the base of the stone.  So its full length is at least 17 feet (5.18m) long -- which makes it one of the longest non-sarsen monoliths in the UK.  

The Rudston monolith in Yorkshire is longer (25 feet tall), but it has no carvings on its surface.  It has probably stood there since the Neolithic or Bronze Age, and it's speculated that it marked a sacred site which was then commandeered by the Christian community when churches and churchyards began to appear on the landscape.

So was the Nevern Church Celtic Cross made from a monolith that was already in position before Brynach, or David, or any of the other Celtic saints arrived in the neighbourhood?  It's possible.

http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/rudston.htm

The Rudston monolith

So where did the 17 ft dolerite monolith come from?  It cannot have been picked up locally, since there are no substantial dolerite outcrops to the north of the River Nevern, and no elongated dolerite erratics either.  It cannot have come from Carn Meini or Carn Goedog, since those dolerites are spotted -- so I must give this matter further thought.......