The Medieval Cross Slab Grave Covers in Cumbria

This is a complete illustrated and annotated list of the extant grave-covers, bearing a cross not an effigy, in Cumbria. Widely distributed, often misunderstood, frequently neglected, and sometimes wilfully destroyed, such grave covers are an important class among medieval memorials.

Cumbrian parish churches preserve the outline of the past, but nineteenth-century and earlier restorers drastically altered most of them, inside and out. It requires a considerable effort of the imagination, and not a little study, to understand what a medieval church looked like and what went on in it.