Northumbria played an important role in the formation of Insular art, a unique style combining Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Pictish, Byzantine and other elements, producing works such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, St Cuthbert Gospel, the Ruthwell Cross and Bewcastle Cross, and later the Book of Kells, which was probably created at Iona.

However the dates assigned to most of the early crosses surviving in good condition, whether at Ruthwell and Bewcastle, the Western Ossery group in Ireland, Iona or the Kildalton Cross on Islay, have all shown a tendency to converge on the period around or slightly before 800, despite the differences between the Northumbrian and Celtic types.

Some have inscriptions recording the donor who commissioned them, like Muiredach's High Cross and the Bewcastle Cross.

Anglo-Saxon crosses were typically more slender, and often nearly square in section, though when, as with the Ruthwell Cross and Bewcastle Cross, they were geographically close to areas of the Celtic Church, they seem to have been larger, perhaps to meet local expectations, and the two 9th century Mercian Sandbach Crosses are the largest up to that period from anywhere.

* The Anglo-Saxon Bewcastle Cross Northumbrian

* The Anglo-Saxon Irton Cross, Cumbria showing affinity to the style of Bewcastle

< center > A sundial showing the four Tide ( time ) | Tides and five Canonical hours, based on the example on the Bewcastle Cross .< center >

Continuous vine scrolls in a great variety of designs of the same general type as the central motif, with few leaves and round fruits, were very common in slightly later religious Anglo-Saxon art, and are often combined with interlace in the same work, especially on Anglo-Saxon crosses, for example the Bewcastle Cross and the Easby Cross now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The vine motif here differs from the common continuous scroll type in that the stems cross over each other twice on each side, but crossing stems are also seen on the upper north face of the Bewcastle Cross and a cross in the church at Hexham.

The Bewcastle Cross (: File: The 7th C Bewcastle Cross ( 2 )-geograph. org. uk-1833421. jpg | alternate view )

Some featured large figurative sculpture of considerable quality, as on the Ruthwell Cross and Bewcastle Cross ( both probably around 800 ).

" Whatever the subject it is, it is clearly the same as the very similar relief that is the largest panel on the nearby Bewcastle Cross which, subject to dating, was probably created by the same artists.

The " Visionary Cross project ", led by Catherine Karkov, Daniel Paul O ’ Donnell, and Roberto Rosselli Del Turco, studies crosses such as the Ruthwell Cross, the Bewcastle Cross, and the Brussels Cross, and in 2012 performed 3D-scans at Ruthwell.

Vine-scroll decoration and interlace are seen in alternating panels on the early Northumbrian Ruthwell, Bewcastle and Easby Crosses, though the vine-scroll is already more prominent, and has faces to itself.

It has been described by Nikolaus Pevsner thus ; " The crosses of Bewcastle and Ruthwell ... are the greatest achievement of their date in the whole of Europe.

* Ó Carragaáin, Éamonn, Christian Inculturation in Eighth-Century Northumbria: The Bewcastle and Ruthwell Crosses, Colloquium Magazine, Vol 4, Autumn 2007, Yale Institute of Sacred Music.

The crosses of Bewcastle and Ruthwell been described by the scholar Nikolaus Pevsner as " the greatest achievement of their date in the whole of Europe ".

* Cook, Albert Stanburrough ( 1912 ) The Date of the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses.

* Ó Carragaáin, Éamonn, Christian Inculturation in Eighth-Century Northumbria: The Bewcastle and Ruthwell Crosses, Colloquium Magazine, Vol 4, Autumn 2007, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, online text, with many photographs

There are dedications to him around Hadrian's Wall and Cumbria, including the forts at Birdoswald and Bewcastle.

The theory that the cross is probably the work of the team of masons and sculptors brought in by Benedict Biscop from the 670s to expand the monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey, then one of the leading centres of culture in the Kingdom of Northumbria is still supported by the Bewcastle website ; this reflects the dating of scholars such as Meyer Schapiro.

) can be found in a small portion of north Cumbria with the southern limit stretching from Bewcastle to Longtown and Gretna.

On 17 November 1539 he was for the third time appointed sheriff of Cumberland ; on 14 May 1541 he sent Henry an account of the state of Scotland, and on 22 October the king ordered reprisals for the burning of some barns near Bewcastle by the Scots ; two days later he added the captaincy of Carlisle to his office of deputy warden, and on 3 January 1542 he was returned to parliament as knight of the shire for Cumberland.

He correctly distinguished what he called " Briton brykes " ( actually Roman bricks ) at several geographically dispersed sites, including Verulamium, Richborough, Lympne, Dover Castle, Canterbury, and Bewcastle.

This information however is based on a semi-legible inscription found at Bewcastle and a military diploma from the period that mentions his name in connection with Britain.

The fort at Birdoswald was linked by a Roman road, known as the Maiden Way, to the outpost fort of Bewcastle, seven miles to the north.

The Bewcastle Cross is an Anglo-Saxon cross which is still in its original position within the churchyard of St Cuthbert's church at Bewcastle, in the English county of Cumbria.

The St. Martin's Cross on Iona is the best-preserved high cross, probably inspired by Northumbrian free-standing crosses, such as the Ruthwell Cross, although a similar cross exists in Ireland ( Ahenny, County Tipperary ).

* The Anglo-Saxon Ruthwell Cross from Scotland, 8th century, with relatively large figures.

File: Ruthwell Cross-Project Gutenberg eText 16785. jpg | Ruthwell Cross ( Ruthwell, Scotland )

The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is, with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry.

In 1818, Dr. Duncan restored the Ruthwell Cross, one of the finest Anglo-Saxon crosses in the United Kingdom, now in Ruthwell church, which had been broken up in the Scottish Reformation.

The Dream of the Rood was written before circa AD 700, when excerpts were carved in runes on the Ruthwell Cross.

In Old English there is The Dream of the Rood, from which lines are found on the Ruthwell Cross, making it the only surviving fragment of Northumbrian Old English from early Medieval Scotland.

There are sections from “ The Dream of the Rood ” that are found on the Ruthwell Cross that dates back to the 8th century.

To this day the authorship of Dream of the Rood remains unknown ; however with the Ruthwell Cross giving the poem a rough time period in which it could have been written, scholars have been able to make educated suggestions on possible authors.

Old English scholar and noted commentator on the Ruthwell Cross Daniel H. Haigh argues that the inscription of the Ruthwell Cross must be fragments of one of Caedmon's lost poems, stating " On this monument, erected about A. D. 665, we have fragments of a religious poem of very high character, and that there was but one man living in England at that time worthy to be named as a religious poet, and that was Caedmon ".

Furthermore, Stephens claims that there is a runic inscription on the Ruthwell Cross, that, when translated, comes to mean " Caedmon made me ".

Old English religious poetry includes the poem Christ by Cynewulf and the poem The Dream of the Rood, preserved in both manuscript form and on the Ruthwell Cross.

The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is, with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry.

After initial success at Hexham, David was wounded, and his army soundly defeated at the Battle of Neville's Cross on 17 October 1346.