EDO5300 - Discovery of 2 Abbatial Effigies, Cerne Abbey, Cerne Abbas; casual observation 1810

Two abbatial effigies were discovered in a ditch on the site of Cerne Abbey in 1810. They had been broken in pieces and laid across a ditch in the ruins of the abbey church [1]. One of the effigies is now lost but was reported to be of marble and comprised a tapering coffin lid on which was carved an ecclesiastic holding a book to his breast in his left hand. The object measured 5 feet 8 inches long in its incomplete state. The second effigy was removed by General Pitt Rivers to his museum at Farnham and so survives. It is carved in purbeck marble but only the upper half survives measuring 3 feet 6 inches long by 19 inches wide. Only a small weathered piece of the coffin survives behind the head. The figure is tonsured, bearded and moustached with a book in his left hand and a crozier in his right. It has been dated to the early 13th century [2][3]. The exact site of the ditch in which these carvings were found is not known. The site has been mapped as a point on a field boundary to the NE of St Austin's Well, close to the assumed approximate site of the abbey church.