Uttoxeter Casket

The Uttoxeter historian Francis Redfern in his History of the Town of Uttoxeter,[1] writing in the 1850s mentions that at Croxden “A curious carved oak panel of Jesus and the Twelve Apostles has lately come to light, and been a subject of discussion at a meeting of a brotherhood of antiquaries at Manchester.” The ruined Cistercian Croxden Abbey as the largest religious building in the locality, would be the most logical source of such an object.

In 1936, the lid, which had first been re-discovered in Uttoxeter eight decades earlier, entered the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) for an opinion.

A Liverpool collector and specialist, Philip Nelson (1872–1953), had purchased the bottom piece in 1921 from a private owner in Warrington, Cheshire, for the sum of £175.

The short sides show Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and the other his baptism though it is possibly first bath at the hands of the Emea (midwife) and Salome.

This type of portable house-shrine was based on the earliest classical form of full-sized feretory or sarcophagus, aptly denominated by early medieval witnesses as a domunculus – or domuncula as in Bede – i.e. ‘little house’ – or even tugurium ‘hut’, which in the case of St Chad’s shrine alluded to by Bede was made of wood rather than stone.

The portable form, suitable for displaying on an altar, is well represented in Anglo-Saxon art by the hip-roofed Uttoxeter casket.