The Bewcastle Cross is one of the finest to survive from Anglo-Saxon Britain. According to the village website, which has a page written by the chap who is now Bishop of Huntingdon (and acting Bishop of St Eds and Ips), it has a Northumbrian style, rather than an Irish one. It probably dates from after 675 when Benedict Biscop brought masons from abroad (Rome and Syria) to work in building his new monastery at Monkwearmouth / Jarrow. This is a Victorian engraving of it.
The runic inscription is now worn and damaged. They may commemorate King Alchfrith of Deira, who made an unsuccessful bid for control of all Northumbria circa 664, and his wife Cyneburh. One story has it that he lived his final years in exile here. Others suggest the cross is later - during the reign of King Eadberht (737-758).
Let’s quote, rather than paraphrase, the Bishop. “The three figures on the Cross are crucial to its significance. The top one is John the Baptist, holding the Lamb of God, and walking on the desert hills, proclaiming Christ in the wilderness and directing our gaze to Him. Below is Christ himself as King and law-giver, being recognised by the animals of the wilderness who are at his feet. And then below the long inscription comes the famous and controversial figure of a man with a falcon or eagle on a perch beside him. It would be remarkable at this date to have a lay portrait, and of such size, on a memorial, though the figure clearly has echoes of an Anglo-Saxon nobleman. The figure we would expect is St John the Evangelist (whose symbol is an eagle), but if so he is depicted in a very unusual way.
Recent research has, however, found a figure of St John in a Syrian (again!) manuscript which shows him in a seated but not dissimilar pose, and with - again unusually - a lamp on a stand by him which looks so like our bird that a modern art historian mistook it for one! Was the cross carved by craftsmen in the Syrian tradition who had a similar picture with them, and made a similar mistake? This is a debate, though, that will continue …
If the figure is St John, the ‘meaning’ of the Cross is clear. In the hole by his arm may well have been a relic of the true Cross, and an altar would have been set up in front of it, perhaps when the Bishop came to baptise and confirm. John the Evangelist calls the candidates and congregation to hear the good news and share in the victory of Christ - and in the long inscription the monument seems to be called a ‘victory beacon’. Their eyes lift, and they are invited to recognise and worship Christ like the animals, and call on His name (which is carved there too) - and then hear the call of the Baptist and be baptized and have their sin taken from them.”