Cross head, Hoddom

Half an ornately carved cross head in coarse sandstone.   This cross fragment was found at Hoddom Collegiate Churchyard.  Little is known about the important religious settlement at Hoddom.  Few mediaeval buildings survive, even as ruins, and although documents exist from the 12th century onwards, they are often incomplete.  Kentigern, later St Mungo, may have been bishop at Hoddom in the late AD 500s before moving on to Glasgow.  Aerial photographs and archaeological excavations show several stone workshops that date from the 7th and 8th centuries onward. These buildings would have been used for corn drying, baking, meat curing and metal working by a large religious community.