Appendix C (Lost stones for which no illustration has survived)

Alan King (2004, 338), in a footnote, mentioned a cross discovered here by Mr Tot Lord, which had apparently been taken out of the district, and was unrecorded except in a letter to the finder from the archaeologist Arthur Raistrick. Mr King kindly provided a copy of this letter, dated '17.iv.1950', which has the letterhead of The King's College, Newcastle, of the University of Durham (as it then was). In it Raistrick says: 'I have looked up the Anglo-Danish crosses and there is no doubt whatever that the fragment of the shaft which you have found at Long Preston is hitherto unknown, and it will rank as a find of great importance. It would be erected in a churchyard either to mark a grave or a preaching cross, and establishes Long Preston as an ancient and pre-Conquest church. As far as I remember the ornament it appears to belong to the class B or AB of Collingwood and so would have dated about 900 to 950 AD. However I will determine this properly for you as soon as I get drawings or a photograph of it.'

There is currently no evidence for the location of discovery. That Mr Lord exchanged the sculpture for an item from another collector is the recollection of Mr King. Efforts to trace it have so far failed, and no drawings or photographs have so far emerged.