Loose on the cill of the tower's west window

The discovery of the stone does not seem to be reported in print. Screveton church's chancel was thoroughly restored in 1881, when a number of its monuments were moved to new locations within the western tower and some fragments of Norman detailing were incorporated in the north-eastern buttress of the chancel (Sutton 1895–6, 336–7; Godfrey 1907, 390). In 1884 an even more through-going restoration was undertaken in the nave (Standish 1908). The first notice of the stone itself is in unpublished letters from A. E. Frost to Romilly Allen in June 1906 (BL, Add. MS 37552, ff. 215, 216, 217, illus.). Frost found it on the cill of the west window, and, in response to Romilly Allen's query, reported that 'it was discovered in the walls of the church during a restoration of the church some ten years ago'. It is likely, then, that Screveton 1 was discovered during the latter of these restorations but not considered appropriate for re-incorporation in the fabric. It is uncharacteristic of his reliability and thoroughness that this discovery close to Newark was not reported by Godfrey. The first published notice seems to have been that by J. Standish, the incumbent and secretary of the fledgling Thoroton Society, of 'a stone on the window cill with some 11th century rope-work on it' (Standish 1908, 59).

St Wilfrid

The stone is the product of a process that saw the original monument first halved down the centre and then each half appears to have been divided into three. The surviving stone then, might represent one sixth of the original monument, and has been re-cut into a rectilinear shape to serve as building stone. Only one original face has survived this process (face B). This face is somewhat weathered and abraded. A rectangular socket-hole has been cut through the stone's entire depth in the upper parts of faces A, B and C. This socket relates to the re-cutting of the stone for reuse and may suggest that the stone was selected at this stage to support a putlog or some similar constructional feature. This square sockethole has been filled-in subsequently by inserting a recently produced stone tile (with crude mechanical tooling), which itself has been partly broken. The re-cut surfaces of the stone all preserve well the tooling relating to their reuse, beneath patches of mortar and more modern cement.

Screveton 1 (Fig. 23) represents one half of one end of a member of the mid-Kesteven grave-cover group (Everson and Stocker 1999, 36–46), after its dismemberment into six blocks for reuse.

A (top): The original lid of the cover has been completely planed away in reuse.

B (long): The only surviving decorated surface represents one end of the side panel of the original monument, although the 'plinth' element along the base of the monument has been entirely removed, involving the loss of perhaps as much as 5 cm. As is typical of monuments within this group, decoration of the side is divided into a transverse panel at the end of the stone and a longitudinal one, of which only part survives here. The transverse panel was bounded by cable mouldings on the arris shared with the 'lid' (face A) and the end of the stone (face C). The lower boundary of the panel has been removed during reuse. The boundary with the longitudinal panel to one side is formed by a double cable moulding. Within these cable-moulded borders sits a unit of interlace of four-strand plait in low relief, although its upper end has been removed by the secondary socket. Nevertheless, it is possible to say that this was either a unit of motif viii (Everson and Stocker 1999, fig. 10) or something like it, with two free rings (as on face A at Kneesall, for example: see Ill. 55). The interlace strands themselves are enlivened with an incised medial line.

As is frequently the case, the longitudinal panel occupying the centre of the monument's side was subdivided into two zones by another bold cable moulding. The lower zone is occupied by a run of four-strand plait with an incised medial line. The pattern starts at the surviving extremity with a 'free ring' but the next unit (which survives only partially within this stone) was more complex. Above the longitudinal cable moulding is a typical run of unornamented three-strand plait, with a single loose end. This would have originated within the 'horn' of a 'bull's head' located at the centre of the side panel, but that detail lay outside the surviving stone.

C (end): This face has been re-cut for reuse.

D (long): This is an entirely new surface created when the original monument was halved in width.

E (end): This is also an entirely new surface, created when the original monument was divided into (probably) six stones.

F (bottom): This is an entirely new face created when the depth of the monument was reduced by perhaps as much as 5 cm for reuse.

Like Girton 1 and Kneesall 1 also in Nottinghamshire, Screveton 1 is a mid-Kesteven grave-cover (pp. 53–61, Fig. 8) that survives in only a partial state, and there is little distinctive about what is known of its decoration. The presence of a cable moulding subdividing the longitudinal panel on face B associates the monument with Rolleston 2 (amongst the Nottinghamshire examples), rather than with Hawksworth 1 and East Bridgford 1, for example. But this is a minor detail which might relate more to the size of the stone being worked here than to any particular sculptor's decision. Like all examples of the mid-Kesteven cover group in the villages that stand to either side of the Fosse Way, that at Screveton is no more than 15 miles from the quarry sites around Ancaster (Fig. 9, p. 60), and it could have been transported by cart, or floated along waterways.

We should note that, whereas the Listing Description for St Wilfrid's refers to '2 fragments of Anglo-Saxon tomb slab and cross shaft', we have been able to locate only one. The local academic literature and the county HER know of only one item, too (Nottinghamshire HER, monument no. L8162).

Late tenth or early eleventh century

Standish 1908, 59; Cox 1912a, 176; Hill 1916a, 202; Mee 1938, 249; Wood 1947, 18; Pevsner 1951, 155; Jope 1964, 108; Pevsner and Williamson 1979, 304; Honeybone 1987, 15–16, 26; Kaye 1987, 28; Sidebottom 1994, 98, 99, 149, 268 and plate; Everson and Stocker 1999, 36, 41, 44, fig. 9; Stocker and Everson 2001, 235, fig. 12.6

[1] The following are unpublished manuscript references to Screveton 1: Nottinghamshire Archives Office, PR 6571, p. 119; DD/TS/14/32/3, unpaginated ('Notes on churches visited No. IV' by Arthur Barratt of Lambley); BL, Add. MS 37552, ff. 215, 216, 217, illus. (Romilly Allen collection).