The only account of these finds is from the respected Nottinghamshire antiquary William Stretton, who reported of St Margaret Owthorpe that 'the church was the chancel of the former church which appears to have been large; foundations and bases of Saxon columns have been discovered in digging graves' (Robertson 1910, 82).

Appendix C item (lost stones for which no illustration has survived).

There must be some doubt about the date and character of the architectural details that Stretton reports. Unfortunately the nave of Owthorpe church was evidently demolished and the surviving chancel was extensively rebuilt in the seventeenth century (Godfrey 1907, 357), making it hard to associate these features with the present fabric. It is perhaps most likely that Stretton's report relates to the discovery of the buried remains of the nave to the west of the present building during digging of graves in that zone of the churchyard. But confusingly, as the church guide reports, there have been various amateur excavations within the churchyard, aimed at discovering a crypt and the remains of Colonel Hutchinson, the Civil War hero who was resident here. It notes that buried remains of the earlier church have been encountered to the east as well as to the west of the present structure (Borrodale 1994). Short of re-excavation, there seems no way of establishing what date these architectural details might be, though on present evidence and considering the way the term 'Saxon' was applied in the early nineteenth century, there is no strong reason to think them pre-Conquest in date.