Part of an ancient Northamptonshire monument to England's first female hermit is up for sale. Should it be allowed to leave Britain?
At the time it seemed the ideal solution. For eight years, Nick Evered has had a piece of carved Anglo-Saxon stone in his sitting room (it came with the house). "It's attractive," he says, but not the sort of thing he would go out and buy; and he could do without the responsibility of looking after it, insuring it and showing it to the occasional visiting scholar. Selling it seemed a good idea. But when he handed the stone over to Bonhams in London – where it is due to be auctioned on Wednesday – he had no idea what a storm the Anglo-Saxon specialists would blow up.
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