A mere scrap, with only one face and a limited surface area visible. One edge (west) may be original and is mirrored by an incision defining a plain border. Alternatively this might be the medial band of a pattern with interlace to either side. Traces of interlace in the field are unclear because of damage but may include a proper over-and-under crossing.

No useful sense can be made of the doubtful patterning on this fragment. Its main diagnostic characteristic is its stone type, in a church fabric mainly comprising heterogeneous local stones and including areas of herringbone masonry from a major Norman building phase and a high-level doorway in the tower putatively of that era or earlier (Thompson 1912, 19; Brooke 1986, 211–15). Graham Lott advises that a number of other stones in the fabric also appear to be of Ketton Stone, however (Chapter II, p. 16). It is not therefore part of a cover or shaft from the prolific late pre-Conquest Ancaster quarries (Everson and Stocker 1999, 33–5, 35–46) and found comfortably within the distribution of those products (ibid., figs. 8 and 12), as Averham's location in the Trent valley just west of Newark might lead us to expect (Fig. 1, facing p. 1). Its technical petrological assessment points rather to a quarry zone that was active in producing building stone in the later pre-Conquest and Anglo-Norman eras (Jope 1964), but not so obviously minor funerary monuments. That may call into question the robustness of its identification as a pre-Conquest item.