At Sinnington church another of these very crude sundials has been discovered, and what may be part of a similar one is high up on the east wall of the chancel of Ellerburne church.  At Kirby Moorside a fine cross with interlaced work is built into the porch of the vicarage.  At Wykeham there is a very plain cross of uncertain age, and Ellerburne, Lastingham, Sinnington, Kirkdale, Kirby Misperton, and Middleton are all rich in carved crosses and incised slabs.  Pickering church only possesses one fragment of stone work that we may safely attribute to a date prior to the Conquest.  It seems to be part of the shaft or of an arm of a cross, and bears one of the usual types of dragon as well as knot or interlaced ornament.  The font, which has been thought by some to be of Saxon origin, seems to be formed from part of the inverted base of a pillar, and though composed of old material, probably dates in its present form of a font from as recent a period as the restoration of Charles II., the original font having been destroyed in Puritan times (Chapter X.).  It would appear that when it was decided to build a large Norman church at Pickering the desire to put up a building that would be a great advance on the previous structure—­for we cannot suppose that Pickering was without a church in Saxon times—–­led to the destruction of every trace of the earlier building.

[Footnote 1:  Morris, J.E.:  “The North Riding of Yorkshire,” p. 33.]

[Footnote 2:  Illustrated, facing p. 209, “Associated Architectural Societies’ Reports,” vol. xii. 1873.]

[Illustration:  Two Crossheads at Sinnington Church.  The one on the left shows a Crucifixion.]

Hinderwell mentions a curious legend in connection with the cave in a small conical hill at Ebberston, that has since been destroyed.  The country people called it Ilfrid’s Hole, the tradition being that a Saxon king of that name took shelter there when wounded after a battle.  An inscription that was formerly placed above the cave said:  “Alfrid, King of Northumberland, was wounded in a bloody battle near this place, and was removed to Little Driffield, where he lies buried; hard by his entrenchments may be seen.”  The roughly built stone hut with a domed roof that now crowns the hill is within twenty yards of the site of the cave, and was built by Sir Charles Hotham in 1790 to preserve the memory of this legendary king.  In the period that lay between the conversion of Northumbria to Christianity in 627, and the ravages of Dane and Northman in the ninth and tenth centuries, we know by the traces that survive that the Saxons built a church in each of their villages, and that they placed beautifully sculptured crosses above the graves of their dead.  The churches were small and quite simple in plan, generally consisting of a nave and chancel, with perhaps a tower at the west end.  Owing to the importance of Pickering the Saxon church may have been a little in advance of the rest, and its tower may have been ornamented as much as that of Earl’s Barton, but we are entering the dangerous realms of conjecture, and must be reconciled to that one fragment of a pre-Norman cross that is now carefully preserved in the south aisle of the present building.