On one of my research trips for the book I visited Lowther Church in Cumbria to see the Viking Age sculpture, which includes hogback gravestones similar to the ones at the Giant’s Grave in Penrith.
Lowther hogback (with shaft of Anglo-Saxon cross)
Lowther hogback (with fragment of another)
Parts of the present church were built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It sits on high ground above the River Lowther and probably occupies the site of an Anglo-Saxon monastery.
In Chapter Six of Strathclyde and the Anglo-Saxons in the Viking Age, I consider a possible tenth-century reference to this monastery as a frontier settlement between the ‘Cumbrians’ (Britons) and the Scandinavian rulers of Northumbria.
SASVA: notes on the Viking Age 
Makes sense… rivers Lowther, Eamont, etc. I haven’t actually seen these. Must make a trip!
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They’re certainly a hidden treasure. It will be interesting to see if the current re-development of Lowther Castle raises awareness of their existence.
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