The rich and diverse visual heritage of Northern Yorkshire in the pre-Conquest period is revealed in this major addition to the much-admired Corpus series.

This volume surveys the sculpture in the historic North Riding of Yorkshire (excluding those parts already covered in Volume III). The total of some 400 carvings include important pre-Viking Age monuments, such as the crosses at Croft, Easby and Masham. The excavated sculpture from Whitby Abbey include a range of inscriptions which form crucial epigraphical evidence for our understanding of the pre-Conquest monastery. But Anglo-Scandinavian monuments predominate, with major collections at Brompton, Kirklevington and Lythe. A number of workshops have been identified and it was in this area that the hogback recumbent memorial first appeared.

Much of the Anglian sculpture has stylistic connections with western Yorkshire and Mercia, and the wider connections with Europe are manifest in the iconography and styles of the great crosses at Easby, Masham and Cundall/Aldborough. There are strong Irish links with the area in the Anglo-Scandinavian period.

This catalogue is a crucial piece in the Corpus jigsaw linking Volumes I, II and III, and marks the culmination of the lifetime's work of a great Anglo-Saxon scholar.