Church Inn, Church Lane, Prestwich (in care of the Prestwich Heritage Society)

Discovered in the churchyard wall, which was built in c. 1975 from stones lying in the churchyard (Manchester Archaeological Unit, unpublished report). Carvings, attributed to the Norman period, were found in 1883–4 during underpinning of the fifteenth-century tower but had disappeared by 1902 (Langton 1885, 36–7; Cheetham 1912b, 59). Any or none of these earlier finds might have been connected to the present fragment.

St Mary

Face B broken away; damaged on face C

Hartwell (et al. 2004) described the carving as 'part of wheel-head cross'. The fragment is, in fact, part of the upper or lateral arm of a free-armed cross of type B9 or B10. For description purposes it is here treated as the upper arm.

A (broad): One lateral roll-moulding border and the adjacent end-border survive; within is knotwork using open flat strands. The surviving pattern can be reconstructed as simple pattern F with included U-bend terminals linked by two strands.

B (narrow): No decoration survives.

C (broad): Though slightly less carving survives on this face as compared to A, the border and pattern seem to be identical to those on the other broad face.

D (narrow) and E (top): Plain

This small head seems to have had fairly stumpy arms with broad curves and would restore to the shape of the Irton cross in Cumberland, a form which Cramp argues is 'late in the pre-Conquest series' (Bailey and Cramp 1988, 116, ills. 355–64). Given that there are a number of free-armed crosses in this area during the Viking period, and that the form of cross-head continues into the tenth century, a date in or after the late ninth century would seem probable. The broad flat open plait would perhaps suggest that the tenth, rather than the ninth, century is the more likely period of carving (see Eccles 1, p. 174).

Ninth or tenth century

Hartwell et al. 2004, 18; Noble 2005, 36, fig. 25a–b; unpublished report in Manchester Archaeological Unit files