Provenance
Discovery: Discovered in the mud surrounding a small spring, known as Maiden’s Well, near a possible Roman fort and Roman road by Redfern in 1870. Redfern believed the fragment to contain evidence of both runic and ogham characters.
Findspot: Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, England (approx. National Grid Reference: SK 0949 3264)
Last recorded location(s): The stone has since gone missing and is now lost.
Support
Historic Environment Record ID: Hob UID: 305133
Object type: Reused millstone fragment
Material: Volcanic rock
Condition: A Roman millstone fragment made from volcanic rock which Redfern (1873, 270) described as ‘a piece of a Runic stone of a tuberous and dark character, with ogham characters on it’. Redfern (1886, 47) ascertained that ‘The stone itself is a piece of sonorous and dark tuff, probably from Andernach on the Rhine’ in Germany.
Inscription
Text field: Redfern did not supply a drawing of the inscription so it is not possible to determine how the purported ogham text was laid out.
Letters: Redfern (1886, 47) did not offer any specific detail about the ogham letters, providing instead only a general remark: ‘Ogham letters are merely straight strokes arranged in groups along a line, as in the instance on this fragment, and mostly contain the name of the person in whose honour such stones were erected’. There is no evidence provided to ascertain whether the inscription was commemmorative.
Commentary
The Uttoxeter stone shares ‘interesting parallels with the Silchester stone — both inscriptions are carved on stone objects leftover from Roman usage rather than on natural stones, and both stones were found in or by wells in Roman settlements. If the Silchester stone is an outlier of the Irish Kingdom of Brycheiniog in south-east Wales, then the Uttoxeter stone can be seen as an outlier from the even closer north Welsh Kingdom of Gwynedd’ (West 2009).
References
- Redfern 1873, 270
- Redfern 1886, 47
- West 2009-11-12,